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REMINISCENCES 


h 


OF 


THE LIFE AND LABOR 


OF 


J J 


A. D; GILLETTE, D.D. 


BY 


HIS FRIENDS AND ASSOCIATES, 


Hon. HORATIO GATES JONES, LL.D., THOMAS ARMITAGE, D.D.. 


R. S. Mac ARTHUR, D.D., GEORGE W. SAMSON, D.D. 


NEW YORK: 


WARD & DRUMMOND, PUBLISHERS, 


116 NASSAU STREET. 


1883. 





COPYRIGHT SECURED, 1883, 

BY 

DANIEL GANO GILLETTE. 



<$*.«< 



tt\ 



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, • 



THE COMPILER TO THE READER. 



Sometimes a remark seemingly casual, drop- 
ped by a man of deep thought and wide experi- 
ence, reveals the real conviction of men envied 
as the favorites of fortune. A profound writer 
of ancient times, a monarch at once the wisest, 
the wealthiest, and the greatest who has left his 
own record of his personal experience, wrote, 
when at the acme of his power, these words : " He 
that winneth souls is wise." In the fascinating 
poem of his youth which pictured a dream of 
domestic bliss never realized because his position 
robbed him of it, in the instructive teachings of 
his manhood whose practical direction the lure 
of his very fortune betrayed him into violating, 
and yet more in the pensive review of a long 
life as the rarest favorite of fortune — every- 
where in his youthful, manhood and aged records 
the same sad disappointment speaks out. Wis- 
dom, wealth, position, all " is vanity," yes, 



4 MEMORIAL. 

" vanity of vanities/' even more, added " vexa- 
tion of spirit." The only relief to him whose 
books had taxed weary students, whose com- 
merce had exposed thousands to hardship, and 
whose imperial rule had laid a heavy burden on 
the poor whom he ought to have relieved, the 
only relief of the aged monarch was, that, per- 
chance in some act of kindly sympathy he had 
won a soul. 

There are men of genius and culture, of gen- 
erous and grand aspirations, who from child- 
hood through youth and manhood, have no other 
object in life than to win souls. They meet 
merchant-princes, statesmen and scholars, as 
peers ; and the pure, true mission of the Gospel 
herald, appreciated by such men, causes their 
own superficial life and influence to dwindle and 
pale in the comparison. They see crowds 
gather indeed about the coffin of the sons of 
fortune, but with eyes that speak no affection ; 
while about the grave of the preacher that won 
and the pastor that led them, the weeping crowds 
of sincere mourners cluster, till the new laid sod 
is watered as by a shower with falling tears. 



THE PASTOR'S HIGH MISSION. 5 

The son of fortune, the merchant-prince, the 
statesman, the man of culture, seldom finds a 
biographer ; and New York is in this respect a 
monument of wonder. But the true, the hon- 
ored, the loved pastor, has something in his 
character, his life, his labor, the world wishes to 
remember. Not too many such find grateful 
biographers. One poem in a century may be 
wrought out which the world will "not will- 
ingly let die." The life of every true pastor 
is a poem that combines Paradise Lost and 
Paradise Regained. The story may be simple ; 
but he who is drawn to read the reminiscen- 
ces of the friends of Dr. A. D. Gillette, will 
find many a page to rivet his interest. Every 
record from the first is drawn from or supple- 
mented by his own autobiographic journal. The 
picture of his origin, his early life, his student- 
years, and his entrance on his work of winning 
souls sketched by his son who withholds his 
name, the appreciative record of his Philadel- 
phia labors penned by one who viewed him as 
the envied sharer of a higher walk, the token of 
esteem from his New York successor in the 



MEMORIAL. 



pastoral office, the testimony as to his varied 
work of love by an associate in the same field, 
and perhaps the fond tribute of a loved intimate 
in all his pastorates, in Philadelphia, New York 
and Washington, till his work was all and so 
well done — it maybe each record, like each writer, 
will bring some added charm to the narrative. 
All certainly will wish with Dr. Wilkinson to 
bring one flower at least to deck his coffin as 
they read the closing record of a life so admired. 



I. 

YOUTH AND EARLY MANHOOD, 

AS TRACED FROM HIS DIARY. 



FAMILY HISTORY. 

" I HAVE fancied myself retiring from my 
never-ending duty as a clergyman, owning and 
cultivating the seven acres of my father's plot, 
building on it a cottage, growing a garden, put- 
ting out trees and shrubbery, living quietly 
there, gathering my dead friends there for sep- 
ulture, and finally lying down there in the dust 
myself." 

" There is bliss in tears, music in a groan, 
beauty in pensive grief, all of which I have ex- 
perienced and proved upon the spot where I 
was born ; yet others could not understand me." 

Thus, in 1867, wrote Dr. Gillette of his child- 



3 



MEMORIAL. 



hood home. It was only a fancy, the veriest 
dream ; for death touched him at his " never-end- 
ing duty," and he lies in the great "city of the 
silent," where all through the days and nights 
of his sleeping, the stir and crash of a mighty 
metropolis break the stillness of every hour; 
and he has " lain down in the dust," far indeed 
from his cherished lakes and hills, but by the 
side of hundreds to whose death-bed he brought 
the peace of the Master, and at whose open 
graves he proclaimed the hope of the life to 
come. 

The home acres so tenderly remembered were 
indeed beautifully situated in the town of Jack- 
son, Washington County, New York, originally 
known as Cambridge, a district famous for its 
scenery. 

A chain of five miniature lakes shut in by 
high hills, thickly wooded by a virgin growth of 
oak, pine, and wild vines, stretched for several 
miles through a lovely vale. Midway of a 
plateau separating the two most easterly waters,, 
stood the humble home ; while over the farthest 
lake the valley reached away till the converging 



DR. GILLETTE S ANCESTRY. 9 

lines of living green were lost in the broken hills 
beyond. 

Amid these scenes the subject of this memoir 
was born, September 8, 1807. He was the 
eighth child, and third son, born to Dr. Fidelio 
Buckingham Gillette, and Tabitha Dunham his 
wife ; who had emigrated to the Jackson Lakes 
from New Jersey in 1793, following the trail of 
pioneers from the same State who had settled in 
the region shortly after the American Revolu- 
tion. 

The ancestors of Dr. Fidelio and his wife be- 
longed to the early history of the country. 
Among the proscribed during the last -expulsion 
of the Huguenots in 1688, was Guillaume Gil- 
lette, from Rochelle in France ; who, to the pro- 
fession of medicine, added that of clergyman. 
He had been allowed to remain in France on 
condition that he should suspend the exercise of 
his spiritual functions. 

The condition imposed seemed to have been 
more unendurable than exile, and following his 
devoted people he came to America and settled 
in Connecticut. A bachelor, he remained un- 



MEMORIAL. 



married until quite late in life, when in 1722 he 
espoused Elizabeth, daughter of John Welsh. 
He had then become Americanized, and ap- 
pears in the town records of Milford, as Doctor 
William Gillette. He lies buried in Lyme, 
Conn., where he died at the age of ninety years. 
To him were born three children. The young- 
est, Elisha, became a clergyman and married 
Lucy, the daughter of Governor Bucking- 
ham, of Connecticut. Of Elisha's two children 
Fidelio Buckingham, born in 1 761, was the 
younger, and became the father of the subject of 
our Memoir.' He was educated at Columbia 
College, New York, studied medicine under Dr. 
Littlefield, and began the practice of his profes- 
sion in Piscataway, New Jersey, from whence 
he migrated to Cambridge, as has been already 
noticed. The wife Tabitha, whom he brought 
with him, then not eighteen years of age al- 
though the mother of two children, was the 
daughter of Jonathan Dunham and Eunice 
Dunn. Through her paternal line she could 
count three generations of clergymen until she 
reached the Plymouth Colony, and through 



HIS EARLY HOME. II 

her mother's line she traced her ancestry to the 
same Puritan source. 

Certainly, if a good name is more to be desir- 
ed than riches, Dr. Gillette was blessed ; and it 
will be interesting to note throughout his career, 
how much of personal dignity, religious feeling, 
patriotism, courage and refinement came to him 
through this long line of strong men and worthy 
women. 

It is equally certain that beyond the possibil- 
ities of equal worth he inherited nothing, for 
when his father Dr. Fidelio came to Cambridge, 
his household and household goods came in 
one lone wagon, while the dollars were few 
with which to found a house. The prospect 
of riches even did not exist. The families a 
physician's ministrations might reach in those 
days were few and widely scattered. Poor as 
himself they could pay but little, and that 
mostly in produce. Fortunately, poverty was 
respectable, and life began with Abram Dunn 
Gillette as it begins in the primitive settlements 
amid the democracies of pioneer labor, out of 
which so many strong hearts and mighty help- 
ers of the world have sprung. 



II. 

HIS BQYHOOD AND EARLY EDUCATION 

The house in which the subject of this sketch 
was born was, as will be inferred, of the most 
primitive description — a small two story frame 
structure with dormer windows, and a low broad 
piazza facing toward the south. About it were 
grouped apple, cherry, plum, and mulberry 
trees, together with a variety of shrubbery ; and, 
as a distinguishing feature, twelve tall Lorn- 
bardy poplars stood like sentinels along the line 
of the road which wound gracefully across the 
plateau in front of this picturesque home. 

In 1807, the year of Dr. Gillette's birth, the 
district had assumed considerable life. The 
road traversing the region was a State road and 
much traveled, so that the early settlers had 
been reinforced by others as well as by the gen- 
eration that had grown up since the first pio- 
neers from New Jersey had carved their homes 
out of the rugged hills. A district school had 
been found necessary, had been established, and 



HIS BOY LIFE. 1 3 

was flourishing. The monotone of recitations, 
and the descent of the indignant birch upon the 
culprit's back, were familiar sounds to young 
Abram long before he himself became one of 
the pupils, as the school-house was but a short 
distance from his father's door. 

Besides his two sisters and three brothers he 
had no end of comrades, although the almost 
constant companion in his boyhood seems to 
have been Master David Ackly, born just one 
hour earlier than himself, and in the next house, 
circumstances which helped to make the lads 
fonder. The details of a boy's life are of little 
moment to the great hurrying world, except as 
they interest us in the study of character and 
mark the career of one who has left the impress 
of his life upon an ever widening circle, and in 
such events as will be noted in the early youth 
of Dr. Gillette will be found nothing complex or 
startling, yet in them were the springs of a 
sturdy faith, a tireless industry, a manliness, 
and a gentle spirit withal which have made his 
memory to those who knew him full of sweet- 
ness and cheer. 

The record of the boyish occupations of the 



14 MEMORIAL. 

lads of Jackson reads like the story of boy life 
among the Indians. Bare-headed and barefoot- 
ed from choice, they were quite as careless and 
free as the red men whom their fathers had 
succeeded. 

The lakes lying so thickly about their homes 
abounded in fish, turtles, and reptiles, while the 
hills were alive with game. Until a lad was old 
enough to labor in the fields, his days were 
marked by some unusual exploit, a wreck or a 
rescue, an enormous fish, turtle, or black-snake, 
or a back-load of squirrels brought home as 
trophies of the day's adventures. The tall 
white pines on the hill-sides were festooned to 
their very tops with wild grapevines, and on 
these the children climbed and swung like 
monkeys. To such exercises in the boy we can 
attribute very much of the man — the strong 
nerves, the broad deep chest, the erect carriage, 
and the brisk, cheery enjoyment of existence 
which distinguished Dr. Gillette through a long 
and wholesome life. 

A great event in a boy's history .occurred to 
young Abram soon after the battle of Pitts- 
burgh and Lake Champlain. His brother, Phi- 



BOYISH MILITARY FAME. 1 5 

lander, had joined the American army at the 
breaking out of the war of 1 81 2, and served 
upon the staff of Brigadier-General Clark Rice. 
On the way from Whitehall to their rendezvous 
at Greenbush, opposite Albany, the American 
troops that had been engaged at Plattsburgh 
marched with their British prisoners along the 
State road and halted in front of Dr. Gillette's 
door, there to part with a number of their com- 
rades who had enlisted from that district. 
Young Abram, with a flaunting feather in his 
cap, rushed in among the prisoners and soldiers ; 
when an officer playfully caught him up and 
thrust his head and shoulders into the mouth-of 
a field-piece, but, on drawing him out again, the 
hat and feather remained in the gun. The lad, 
thinking more of his cap and feather than of 
his head, defiantly demanded the return of his 
belongings. The officer reached in the gun 
with his sabre and securing the hat clapped it on 
the little white head, with the remark, " You're 
a little General, and a plucky one too." The 
title of " Little General " he long wore after 
that, and it helped not a little to his self-impor- 



i6 



MEMORIAL. 



tance. That night his father took him to the 
encampment, where Commodore McDonough, 
the hero of Lake Champlain, placed him on his 
knee, and patting his head said, " Why, my son, 
your head is whiter than my own." Such 
honors were precious to the child, and even to 
the man were pleasant to remember. 

In March, 1813, circumstances occurred which 
changed the tide in his affairs. During the 
temporary absence of his parents the home, 
reared with so much patient toil, was utterly 
consumed by fire. Abram, with his brother 
Walter and his sister Abigail, were playing in 
the orchard when suddenly flames burst out 
around the chimney. Boy-like, and with a de- 
sire to save some of the treasures dear to his 
young heart, he rushed to the door and forcing 
it open was about to enter, when the added 
draught of the open door wrapped him in fire 
and he fell fainting in the doorway. Fortun- 
ately his brother Walter was closely following 
him, and seeing him fall, dragged him by the 
feet out of the house, not, however, until his 
hair had been nearly burned from his head. 



THE HOME IN ASHES. 1 7 

Reviving in the open air, he "took his little sister 
on his back and carried her to his grandfather 
Dunham's, while Walter ran on ahead to alarm 
the neighbors. But assistance came all too late, 
and in a few minutes nothing remained of the 
house or its contents but the old iron mortar in 
which his father ground his medicines. A 
home, a useful and by no means insignificant 
professional library for the times, instruments, 
medicines, and the countless belongings, gath- 
ered during twenty years of patient professional 
labor, had, in less than half an hour, mingled 
with the elements, and life stared the settlers in 
the face again as it had a score of years before. 
To add to the distress, Cornelia, the eldest 
daughter, a beautiful girl of twenty, sickened, 
and in nine days thereafter they buried her on 
the very day she was to have been married. 
Houseless and heart-broken, it had been too 
much had not the neighbors opened their homes 
to the stricken ones. 

In the general helpfulness Abram came in for 
a new suit of blue clothes with bell buttons, giv- 
en him by Judge Wendels of Cambridge, while, a 



1 8 MEMORIAL, 

nearer neighbor, Jifdge McLean, donated an old 
beaver hat to complete the outfit. A home he 
found and other comforts, so that he confesses to 
some regret when orders came, late in the sum- 
mer, to move into the new house which had 
been erected near the site of the old homestead. 
But the father's hands were palsied. He had 
been obliged to sell his horses in order to help 
build his house, and this narrowed his practice 
to such patients as he could visit on foot. The 
loss of his books and instruments further re- 
stricted his usefulness, while the death of his 
favorite daughter took the courage out of his 
heart. It therefore became necessary that such 
of the children as could earn their living should 
do so ; and so, when the struggle became too 
hard, the home circle was broken never again 
to be united. The brothers, Philander and 
Walter, went to their friends in New Jersey, 
while Abram, then nine years of age, entered 
the home and service of his grandfather Jon- 
athan Dunham. Here he did the chores of 
house and farm with very little respite, chop- 
ping wood, driving cattle to and from pasture, 



HIS FATHERS DEATH. ig 

milking, and in the summer and fall working in 
the field ; confident, as he afterward delighted 
to say, that he earned all he ate and wore — 
his only compensation. From his grand-father 
Dunham's he went to a similar field of duty 
at his Uncle Abram Dunham's farm at Bat- 
tenville, three miles west of his former home. 
With this uncle he spent two years, tending 
three hundred sheep and many cattle, cutting 
wood for two fires, and, as at his grandfather's, 
earning only his board and clothing. 

In November, 1818, while at his uncle's, word 
came that his father had died under circumstan- 
ces most distressing. He had gone out in the 
night to visit an invalid neighbor, and was found 
in the morning within sound of home, dead by 
the road-side. There were no signs of violence, 
but every indication that death had come after 
prolonged agony of mind and body. It was no 
common bereavement to the boy, as no lad ever 
had a kinder or more loving father. 

In the following April, after alternating in 
service between the farms of his grandfather 
and his uncle, Abram packed his bundle, bade 



20 MEMORIAL. 

adieu to his home, and with but fourteen cents 
in his pocket, trudged through the rain to the 
village of Hartford — where he entered the ser- 
vice of Major Calvin Jillson, a tanner by trade. 
Mrs. Jillson had buried two children and was 
ever after childless. Nothing could exceed the 
tender, loving care of this lady, and the orphan 
lad found at last a home. Although but four- 
teen years of age, he was installed in a responsi- 
ble position, yet not under pay. 

Such education as he had been able to acquire 
was gotten in a desultory sort of way at the 
district school, when his farm duties permitted 
him to attend, but beyond the merest rudi- 
ments of knowledge he knew little of books, 
or methods- of study. He however made the 
little, of use to his employer, so that he was 
lifted from the drudgery of farm and house 
labor to a desk where he kept accounts, attend- 
ed to sales, receipts and purchases, and handled 
the cash of the concern. As an evidence of 
the confidence reposed in him, Mr. Jillson sent 
him at one time fifteen miles in a cutter alone 
with $2,000 in silver, the first payment on a 



HIS ORPHAN TRAINING. 21 

real estate transaction. When the payee count- 
ed the money it was found to be twenty-five 
cents in excess of the expected sum, which ex- 
cess he was proud to return to Mr. Jillson. 

His life at Hartford gave him excellent social 
opportunities, as Major Jillson was both a mili- 
tary man and a politician, entertaining largely. 
To every privilege of the home Abram was 
admitted as freely in all respects as though he 
were a son. More than all to him was the 
opportunity for reading which his evenings af- 
forded, and the advantages of the school taught 
by Major Daniel Brown, an old friend of bis 
father's, who took a special interest in his stud- 
ies. So rapid was his progress and so well 
known had he become in the community, that 
Governor Pittcher offered him an appointment 
at West Point ; which, however, after many objec- 
tions on his mother's part, he declined. 

When in his sixteenth year, the desire for an 
education took full possession of him. It was 
useless, he thought, to study in a half-hearted 
way, dividing his time between business and 
books, with his duty to his benefactor para- 



22 MEMORIAL. 

mount, and as far as he could look ahead he saw 
no further progress toward his cherished ideal 
so long as he remained in Hartford. 

Already he had determined upon his profes- 
sion, although as yet there had .been no special 
awakening of religious feeling within him. A 
preparation for that work was imperative, 
and the need was no sooner appreciated than 
the determination came to accomplish it. He 
planned a secret flight to the home of his 
uncle, Daniel Gano Gillette, at Patchogue, Long 
Island, who had arrived at honors and wealth, 
and who had written to have him make his 
home with him upon learning of the death of his 
father. 

The lad, 'on counting his savings, found the 
goodly sum of six dollars. More deliberate and 
solemn preparations for a flight were never 
made. By working odd hours in the evening, 
he manufactured a leather satchel in which he 
carefully packed his extra clothing — not forget- 
ting a loaf of bread, some butter, and a piece of 
dried beef. An invitation to an entertainment 
at South Hartford afforded the long-looked for 



HIS STUDENT ADVENTURE. 23 

occasion to steal away under cover of the night. 
Ke lingered behind the rest of the party, arriv- 
ing some half hour later. Concealing his satchel 
in the barn adjoining the hotel in which the 
company had assembled, he entered the hall and 
engaged in the dance, actually leading out for 
that purpose no less a personage than his kind 
friend Mrs. Jillson, whose loving heart he was 
about to wound. During the evening he called 
his three particular friends, Robert Hyde, De 
Witt Clinton Austin and William Porter, out 
into the air, and showing them his satchel, con- 
fided the purpose of his heart. A long consul- 
tation in the moonlight ended in the verdict 
that nothing could be more noble and self-sacri- 
ficing; and after an interchange of gifts and 
kisses, the council adjourned with pledges of 
secrecy until the fugitive should be heard from 
by letter. 

Seven miles that night brought him to Argyle, 
where he slept with the son of the tavern-keeper, 
resuming his journey" at sunrise. All day he 
trudged over icy, frozen roads, till night again 
overtook him at Schaticoke Point. At noon 



24 MEMORIAL. 

of the following day he arrived at Lansingburg, 
where he met a quondam acquaintance, one 
Prindle, a tavern-keeper, who offered him the 
position of bar-keeper. The proposition, al- 
though politely declined, started a train of 
thought which became more vivid and intense 
as the march to the southward drew on. 

He crossed the Hudson on the ice to Troy, 
and thence to Albany. At the village of Wa- 
terford where night overtook him, he began 
seriously to reflect, that he had never seen his 
uncle Daniel, that Long Island was chiefly in- 
habited by sailors and fishermen, and probably 
as barren of educational advantages as Hartford. 
In his eagerness he had not thought of that, 
while his first opportunity for employment since 
leaving his friends had been a kindly-meant offer 
to peddle rum. He resolved to return to Hart- 
ford and ask his friends the Jillsons for freedom 
to study, so that he might fit himself for teach- 
ing. At sunrise he began his march homeward 
and at eleven o'clock the same night he stole 
into his old home and into his bed, tired, foot- 
sore, and repentant — a march of fifty-three miles 



HIS ADVENTURE WITH LAFAYETTE. 2$ 



in sixteen hours. He was awakened in the 
morning by the kisses of Mrs. Jillson, to whom 
he related the cause .of his flight and his return. 
There were no reproaches in that dear home, 
nothing but love, that saw the anxious heart of 
the boy and the dear wish that lay so near to it. 
There was less charity in the village, however, 
where his flight had created not a little excite- 
ment ; and it was months before he ceased to be 
consulted about the scenery and products of 
Long Island. 

In 1825, and while living at Hartford, young 
Gillette was not a little honored, although in a 
chance way. He had for two years and more 
belonged to a militia organization, and during 
the visit of General Lafayette to this country in 
that year, he was detailed as one of twenty-four, 
each representing a State of the Union, whose 
duty should be to act as a body-guard to the 
nobleman who had given so much to liberty. 
Abram was representing his State in the brave 
attire of the rifle company of which he was a mem- 
ber. The horse of Major Gibbs, the Marshal of the 
occasion on the reception of Lafayette, became 



26 



MEMORIAL. 



unmanageable, dashing into and confusing the 
line of the body-guard. In the struggle to keep 
his feet young Gillette swung suddenly about, 
bringing his rifle with a pretty forceful blow 
against the hero of the hour. Hat in hand he 
rushed to the General's side with profuse apolo- 
gies. Lafayette, laying his hand on the young 
man's bare head, said in broken but very dis- 
tinct English, " God bless you, my son. May 
you never do more harm than you have done." 
It was an honor he did not soon forget. 

Shortly after the return of the fugitive, the 
Jillsons removed to West Granville, and took 
their protege with them. It was an advanta- 
geous change for the ambitious youth in many 
ways. In Granville was a flourishing academy, 
presided over by Salem Towne, LL.D., a man of 
learning and an experienced instructor. Under 
his influence literary societies were formed com- 
posed of both young men and old, of which 
Abram became an active member. A circula- 
ting library also existed, from which the young 
student obtained the most ponderous of vol- 
umes, Robertson's History of the United 



HIS ADVANCED SCHOOL-LIFE. 27 

States, and devoured it from preface to colon. 
He was still the clerk of Major Jillson, and still 
without wages. His longing eyes were fixed 
on the academy the while he plodded on in un- 
remunerative toil. The literary and debating 
societies gave him a chance to be heard, so that 
he soon became an important member, well 
known for his facility in speaking. Although a 
tanner's clerk he numbered among his friends 
the very best of the people, and enjoyed the dis- 
tinction of membership in the advanced Ly- 
ceum, in which such citizens as Doctors Searles, 
and Bigelow, Judge Parker and Counsellor 
Gibbs were prominent. At their houses also he 
was a welcome visitor, and this companionship 
brought his aptitude and desire for study in 
such manner to their notice that in the autumn 
of 1826, he entered as a student under Doctor 
Towne. A few months of tireless application 
made the doctor his friend as well as his pre- 
ceptor, and at the doctor's solicitation the 
young student presented himself for examin- 
ation before the school trustees for appointment 
as .-principal of the village school. He was sue- 



28 MEMORIAL. 

cessful, and began his duties and his first employ- 
ment under pay, $17 per month, with the 
privilege of boarding around. 

During the winter of his first year of teach- 
ing, he attended a course of thirteen lectures on 
English grammar, language, and literature, from 
which he derived untold benefit ; but except 
these few helpful occasions, his education went 
on alone, and at hours when the rest of the 
world were sleeping. He wrung the lore of 
books out of the busy day, and won his weapons 
in a hand to hand fight with iron fortune. It 
was his special pride to remember that from his 
earliest knowledge of things to do, he wrought 
daily for the bread he ate, the clothes he wore, 
and the shelter that covered him. Never one 
dollar in charity, or as a nobler gift, did he re- 
ceive, while every penny saved or spent repre- 
sented some specific service rendered. 

The compensation for his early struggles came 
in the strong will, the honest persistence and 
self-reliance that eventually placed him on a 
height from which the rugged steps he had 
trodden stretched backward into the pleasant 
valleys, while the future was nearing the sun. 



III. 

EARLY RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

It would be difficult to fix upon any particu- 
lar period of Dr. Gillette's life when he was 
especially exercised in spiritual things. In him 
there were no sudden tempests of the soul, no 
supreme dejection on account of sin, original or 
acquired. 

The stateliness of the Puritan walk, the cruel 
self-reproach, the hard unyielding of the Puritan 
conscience, the fierce contests with the almost 
visible spirit of evil, had softened through three 
generations of godly ancestors, and left in both 
his father and mother an untroubled faith and 
an unwavering hope as calm and beautiful as an 
Eastern twilight. The foundations of his pa- 
rents' belief had never weakened ; they were 
grandly Puritan, and as firmly rooted in their in- 
telligence as in their hearts ; but beneath their 
roof-tree there was no harshness in religious 



30 MEMORIAL. 

duty, no task in pious observance ; and worship 
was as much a part of each day as the labor 
which brought them bread. 

The spirit of the beautiful in godliness per- 
vaded the community of Jackson like a grand 
friendship. The Sabbath was hallowed by the 
restfulness of blessings all its own, while the 
hymns, the prayers and discourses, which made 
up its ceremonials, crowned each week with joy. 
Again, with the exception of the Bible, books 
were rare. Contemplation therefore took on a 
religious phase as God's dealings with his people 
were oft-told tales. The histories of David and 
Solomon, Daniel and Joseph, Samuel and the 
Christ-child, filled up the measure of nurse- 
ry lore, and left the young imagination as 
wholesome, pure, and exalted as though it had 
walked with angels. Add to such influences the 
tenderest of motherly ministrations, the large- 
hearted help and companionship of a just and 
loving father, and you have an atmosphere so 
purified and clear that there are no fierce 
passions to wreck and tear hope and life into 
shreds. 



HIS GRADUALLY OPENING PIETY. 3 1. 

In such an atmosphere. Dr. Gillette was born 
and reared. Spiritual life with him was a 
growth. It belonged among the dearest tradi- 
tions of his house and moved along with its his- 
tory ; so that when a! the age of twenty, he 
publicly professed his faith, it was as much a 
part of him as any attribute of his being, wholly 
of him and in him, as the brain with which he 
weighed it and the heart in which it was 
cherished. 

It is not to be understood that he was always 
religiously inclined, that he maundered listless- 
ly through his youth in a dreamy ecstasy of 
pious emotion (for although never a rugged boy 
yet life through his veins flushed and hurried 
with all the speed of health and merriment) ; but 
with him always was a reserve force of right 
thinking, an honest intent and purpose that 
made dissipation loathsome and abhorrent. 

He was not without temptations, resistance to 
which tends so greatly to the formation of 
strong character, yet he always found help to 
resist and master them continually, as he con- 
fesses, urging himself on toward a standard of 



32 MEMORIAL. 

manliness he had set up for himself. To such 
an individuality there are no great upheavals and 
sudden revulsions of feeling. Changes in moral 
structure come to such an one only after a 
demonstration of their inherent need ; therefore 
we find him when only a boy of fourteen, cry- 
ing aloud, " God helping me I will preach the 
Gospel," and then moving cautiously toward 
the fulfillment of his pledge to heaven ; yet 
not until six years thereafter openly professing 
his belief. 

Fortunately his advantages for religious in- 
struction had not been so meagre as his oppor- 
tunities for study ; for at the school-house near 
his home, at Jackson, he had frequently listened 
to the teachings and discourses of such pastors 
as Rev. Dr. Alex. Bullions, Dr. N. S. Prime, 
Dr. Toombs, William M. Culloch, Edward 
Barker, and Thomas Baker. These and others 
were frequent visitors at his father's house, 
usually accepting his hospitality on the days 
they were to conduct the services at the school- 
house. 

An invalid neighbor, Mrs. Marsh, who moved 



THE EARLY SUNDAY-SCHOOL. 33 

about in a wheeled chair, inaugurated a Sunday- 
school in her house, at which the children of 
Jackson faithfully attended. Mrs. Marsh and 
her granddaughter were its only teachers. It 
was the first Sunday-school in the settlement, 
and it flourished for twenty years. Out of it 
came several clergymen, and many good men 
and women. In this school young Gillette was 
introduced to a curious collection of books, con- 
sidered in the light of our modern appliances 
for young students of the Christian evidences : 
the "Religious Primer," "New England Prim- 
er," the " Shorter Catechism," and the " Child's 
Instructor;" but the book he most read was the 
Bible, and it was not unusual for him to retire 
by himself and after reading a portion of Script- 
ure, to utter a prayer. It was not the custom of 
those days for pastors to address children par- 
ticularly on subjects of religion ; but he remem- 
bers that Rev. Thomas Baker made the first 
direct and personal appeal to him to give his 
heart to the Lord Jesus. He was but a boy of 
eight years, but the blessing of the aged pastor 
with which he touched the boy, made a deeper 
3 



34 MEMORIAL. 

mark than he thought, for the child went im 
mediately to the carriage house, and there 
prayed fervently with weeping eyes and a ten- 
der heart. Dr. Gillette records of these boyish 
days, that it was his* custom when at work alone 
in the barn, on the farm, or in his own room, to 
call upon God as upon a parent. There was 
never any dread of God's displeasure when he 
approached him, and his prayers were more the 
instinct of worship than any special plea for 
needs or forgiveness under an impending sense 
of fear and dread of so good a father. 

During these days there were, on occasions, 
considerable renewed interest in religion, and the 
Sunday services were frequently concluded by a 
baptism of one or more in the lake near the 
school-house. Of these ordinances he was 
always an interested witness, and frequently 
found himself wishing that he might be one of 
the happy company who were thus following 
Christ. From the gallery of the old meeting- 
house at Battenville he witnessed the ordinance 
of the Lord's Supper, when the same longing 
for fellowship with Christians possessed him. 



PREACHERS THAT WON HIM. 35 

Occasionally with friends he would attend the 
old white meeting-house at Cambridge where 
Rev. Dr. Prime preached ; and again, at times, 
at the preaching of Rev. Dr. Bullions ; from both 
of whom he became inspired with the dignity 
and manliness of the Christian life, as these men 
were of commanding powers and presence. But 
the pastor to whom his love went most fervently 
out, was the Rev. Mr. Baker, of the little Bap- 
tist church near home. He was rich in children, 
but otherwise poor indeed ; yet a faithful work- 
man whose hands raised in prayer showed the 
stains of daily toil as a cobbler. But toil helped 
him to brotherhood with labor, and the compan- 
ionship wrought out the salvation of many souls. 
At this time, Dr. Gillette records, " It would have 
been my privilege and duty to have been baptised 
and united with Christ's people then ; but my 
feet trod many slippery paths ere I was pub- 
licly consecrated to my Master's work." 

When Dr. Gillette was about thirteen years 
old, his brother Philander, who had been study- 
ing theology with Rev. Dr. Staughton of Phila- 
delphia, paid a visit home, and frequently 



36 



MEMORIAL. 



preached in the churches and private dwellings. 
This was to the younger brother a constant 
source of wonder and delight ; and doubtless out 
of it grew the yearning to follow in the foot- 
steps of this the sixth of the line who had been 
clergymen. 

Neither Major nor Mrs. Jillson, with whom 
he went to reside at Hartford after the death of 
his father, were religious people, but they en- 
couraged their protege in his inclinations toward 
a good life. At Hartford he attended regularly 
at both church and Sunday-school; and it was 
while living there that one day, sitting in the 
gallery of the Presbyterian church the convic- 
tion that he should preach the Gospel came 
upon him. Out of it came also the cry " God 
helping me I will preach the Gospel." It was 
uttered audibly with suppressed voice intensified 
by supremest feeling. 

Along with this new determination came the 
no less intense appreciation of the need of an 
education ; and it is amusing to note with what 
inconsistent activities he immediately began to 
fulfil his pledge. These were none other than 



FIRST CONFESSION OF FAITH. 37 

stealthy preparations to desert his friends the 
Jillsons, and run away by night to Long Island, 
where his uncle was a Judge and would help 
him. In the preceding chapter has been re- 
corded the details of this absurd flight and its 
still more ludicrous result ; yet could those who 
scoffed at the boy have gone down into his soul 
and there seen the pleading, anxious out-reach- 
ing of every need of his life toward the hope 
that was in him, they would have mingled their 
tears with his own at the pathetic picture of the 
lad fleeing from friends and love out into the 
frozen night to find the voice that was calling 
him to the service of Christ. 

At Granville, to which place his friends mov- 
ed, the chances for study and religious instruc- 
tion ran side by side. Here he began his stud- 
ies at the Academy amid somewhat different 
social and religious influences. He associated 
himself with several societies for mental culture, 
and also with churches, Sunday-schools, and 
evening meetings for prayer at private houses. 

At a social meeting held at the residence of 
Deacon Graves, Dr. Gillette made his first pub- 



38 MEMORIAL. 

lie acknowledgment of his interest in religion, 
by rising from his seat and stating his wish to 
become a Christian. - It was a surprise to all but 
himself. Even the pastor, Mr. Savage, seem- 
ingly amazed, said aloud, " Why ! Abram, what is 
the matter ? " But it had been no new thought 
with him. He had previously given his heart 
to the Saviour as he knew, but the opportunity 
which to him seemed most fitting had never 
before occurred. The whole process of regen- 
eration in him had been wrought out in the 
years gone since his boyhood. He had even 
settled the question as to which church his con- 
victions urged him, so that Dr. Savage, the 
Presbyterian pastor at whose meeting he first 
confessed his interest in spiritual things, ended 
a conference one day by telling him he should 
see Dr. Dilloway, the Baptist pastor. 

He did see Dr. Dilloway ; and one Sunday in 
May, 1827, Dr. Dilloway led him down into the 
waters of the Granville River and baptised him 
into the blessed likeness of his Redeemer. Up 
to this time he had never intimated to any one 
his purpose to become a clergyman, and did not 



CONVICTIONS AS TO THE MINISTRY. 39 

until several months after his baptism, when Dr. 
Dilloway, whose attention had been called to 
him by his facility in speech and prayer in the 
social meetings of the church, kindly questioned 
him as to his convictions of duty. To him he 
confessed the wish nearest his heart when the 
way seemed brighter before him and the long 
cherished hope nearer. 

Soon after these conversations, Dr. Gillette 
began his duty as teacher of the village school. 
Absolved from the necessities of less congenial 
employment, his studies progressed rapidly ; and 
in October, 1828, the church called him before 
its committee and members, and requested a 
statement from him as to his convictions and 
reasons for wishing to enter the ministry. It 
was a trial at which he seemed tongue-tied.' 
He remembers to have said so little and that so 
imperfectly, after all the years of longing 
and expectancy, that, utterly discouraged and 
heart-broken, he went into the cemetery while 
the committee was deliberating, and knelt weep- 
ing over the grave of a young pastor, a friend, 
who had recently died. All his fondest hopes 



40 MEMORIAL. 

seemed cast in an untrue balance which found 
him wanting, and he almost prayed to lie in the 
grave with his friend. His fears were ground- 
less, for when he was summoned for the verdict, 
he was informed that the church had unani- 
mously agreed that it was his duty to enter the 
ministry, and furthermore had fixed upon a day 
when he was to preach before them his trial 
sermon. The day came and the sermon was 
preached, with every one he had ever known 
staring up into his face, except his preceptor, 
Dr. Towne, who with kindly delicacy forbore to 
embarrass the young preacher by his presence. 
What the sermon was or from what text is not 
on record, except as Dr. Gillette's notes have 
indicated by the expressive word " torture." 
However, " he builded better than he knew," for 
the church commissioned him from thenceforth 
to preach the glad tidings of great joy. 



IV. 

ORDINATION AND EARLY MINISTRY. 

Notwithstanding the cordial recommenda- 
tion of the church into which he had been new- 
ly born, and such authority to preach as the 
society could give had been officially reposed in 
him, none knew better than Dr. Gillette that 
nearly every material requisite of his holy call- 
ing was wanting. 

To obtain these necessitated the most cautious 
husbanding of the small salary he derived from 
teaching, and with the most unyielding self- 
denial, every dollar was hoarded until a sum 
sufficient to defray a term's expenses at the Uni- 
versity had been accumulated. Then he would 
repair to Hamilton and enter Madison Univer- 
sity, returning to his profession of teaching 
when his funds became exhausted. 

Occasionally his compensation would im- 

(41) 



4 2 



MEMORIAL. 



prove as he moved from town to village in 
charge of various schools and academies, but at 
no time did his salary exceed twenty-five dollars 
a month ; and in pursuit of this sum he trans- 
ferred the scene of his labors to the adjoining 
State of Vermont. 

It was during a winter in that State that he con- 
tracted a disease of the eyes which seemed not 
to yield to treatment, and which rendered teach- 
ing dangerous and personal study out of the 
question. In the preparation for the recitations 
of his classes and the acquirement of themes and 
material for his discourses, he was obliged to 
employ some one to read to him, which sadly 
crippled his income ; but he struggled on in the 
strength of the great hopes within him. Thrice 
had he quitted the University after heroic ef- 
forts to maintain his position in spite of the 
disadvantages of his affliction. 

Finally the time came when he must either 
desist or lose his sight. His eyes were terribly 
inflamed, the slightest exercise of vision causing 
intensest pain. But, necessitated to earn his 
living, he accepted an appointment as colporteur 



BIBLE SOCIETY AGENCY. 43 

for the Bible Society, with his special field of 
labor through his native Washington County, 
especially through the townships of Dresden and 
Putnam. 

It was during this service that he first visited 
Lake George and conceived such admiration of 
its majestic beauty as led him, late in life, to 
build upon its lovely shores the cottage of 
which he had so fondly dreamed. Although 
not upon the dear site of the old homestead, yet 
in the same county, amid the same character of 
scene and with the added charm of sacred mem- 
ory, he selected the spot which belonged to the 
estate of his brother-in-law, Amariah Taft, who 
had married his eldest sister Emeline. She had 
passed from earth and was resting there near 
the spot which all her married life had been her 
home and the home of his youngest brother, 
Daniel, whom she had tenderly reared. 

But a change of activities from sedentary to 
out-door life did not bring the coveted relief to 
his sight. With the constant pain came restless- 
ness of spirit and a wasting of vital forces. Ut- 
terly discouraged, he once more turned his face 



44 MEMORIAL. 

toward Long Island and the home of his uncle, 
with the intention of shipping as a sailor on one 
of his uncle's vessels, then engaged in the Med- 
iterranean trade ; a sea voyage having been sug- 
gested as a probable means of recovery. 

On his way thither, he stopped over Sabbath 
at Saratoga and preached for the people there. 
Among his hearers was a Baptist brother 
from Schenectady, who, after service, learning of 
the destination of the young preacher, suggested 
that he preach to the little struggling flock at the 
latter place. Bethinking himself of some dear 
friends residing there, Deacon Sheldon and 
family, he consented. On July 9, 1831, he pre- 
sented himself at Deacon Sheldon's door, and 
was welcomed with all the sincerity of affection 
and with the hospitality of a Christian home. 

At that time there were six evangelical 
churches in Schenectady, all well attended ex- 
cept the Baptist ; which, from having no settled 
pastor, and depending upon the casual visits of 
clergymen, had dwindled into a very uncertain 
society. But the fire had not entirely gone out 
while Deacons Sheldon and Bailey were watch- 



FIRST FAME AS PREACHER. 45 

ing the little altar with anxious prayerful 
hearts. 

It had been arranged that on the following 
day the Rev. Mr. Haff should occupy the pulpit 
in the morning, the aged Father St. John in the 
afternoon, and at an extra evening service, Dr. 
Gillette. Something of fame, or curiosity, had 
preceded the young preacher ; for when evening 
came, the unusual number of sixty-two hearers 
had assembled in the hitherto almost deserted 
chapel. 

The text, " There is joy in the presence of the 
angeb over one sinner that repenteth," was an- 
nounced with all the trepidation of a novice in 
a strange community, and the service ended in 
woeful doubt ; which was happily cleared away 
when the brethren crowded around him urging 
him to remain and preach for them the coming 
Sabbath, which he consented to do. 

The intervening week was one of extreme 
suffering. The excitement of the Sabbath had 
so inflamed the diseased eyes, that the days 
were spent in a darkened room with an occasion- 
al release at early dawn and twilight ; but the 



-\6 MEMORIAL. 

Lord's day found the zealous young man at his 
post in the pulpit. The third Sabbath of his 
stay in Schenectady found his congregation 
filling every available place in the church, 
and ended in an invitation to remain with them 
for three months. 

These months were full of work, not only at 
home, but elsewhere in neighboring towns 
and villages, attending funerals, preaching in 
school-houses and private dwellings. His suc- 
cess had been so phenomenal that brethren had 
come to hear him from outlying hamlets, beg- 
ging of him an evening's talk with their people 
who would have no other opportunity to hear 
him. 

His eyes were still feeble and of little use. 
Hymns for service were recited from memory, 
and chapters of Scripture eked out in the same 
way, while his discourses seemed but the recital 
of his thoughts born in the darkened solitude of 
his days, when alone with his pain he drew so 
near to the great heart of the Master. 

The prosperity of the little church seemed 
assured, and of healthy though rapid growth. 



CALL TO ORDINATION. 47 

The brethren soon began to urge the young 
man, who had been God's instrument in awaken- 
ing the sleeping spirit in their hearts, to submit 
himself to ordination. 

To these tempting suggestions of a permanent 
pastorate Dr. Gillette would not listen, urging, in 
his own behalf, his impaired health, his imper- 
fect education, and the absolute need of years of 
systematic mental preparation for the service. 
The church, however, went on heedless of these 
objections, and unanimously " resolved to call " 
him " to ordination, and use all proper means 
to induce him to accept." 

Such action could not be utterly ignored, 
and the young man put himself in the hands 
of the church. Before the convocation of the 
Council, which had been fixed for the 28th of 
September, he visited his old home and the va- 
rious towns where he had spent his boyhood and 
youth, preaching of course as opportunity offer- 
ed. Especially did he seek out his old pastor, 
Dr. Dilloway, and urge him to attend the Coun- 
cil and preach the ordination sermon, in the 
event the Council should decide to ordain him. 



4 8 



MEMORIAL. 



. On the appointed day the Council met and 
organized, with Rev. Elijah F. Willey of Lan- 
singburgh as moderator, and Rev. B. M. Hill 
of Troy as clerk. As associates there were pres- 
ent the Revs. Abijah Peck, John Harris, E. D. 
Hubbell, Elijah Herrick, S. Wilkins, Ashley 
Vaughn, Joshua Fletcher, and the Rev. Dr. 
Welch, together with about twenty deacons and 
delegates from churches in the vicinity. The Rev. 
Dr. Dilloway, his early pastor, was also present. 
Concerning this, to him, all-important event, 
Dr. Gillette has left the following account : — 

" I gave a sketch of my Christian experience, 
my views making it my duty to preach the Gos- 
pel ; and next a written outline of my doctrines, 
convictions of religious duty, practice, and church 
discipline. Many, very many questions were 
asked me by brethren of different views, as I 
then thought and have since more fully learned, 
more to controvert each other on the atonement 
than to ascertain my own convictions of the 
subject. Brothers Welch, Hill, and Willey were 
particularly engaged in this wordy war. 

" I fell on confusion worse confounded, not 



THE. DAY OF ORDINATION. 49 

knowing what they were after or how to reply 
to their peculiar interrogatories. Dr. Welch, 
discovering my embarrassment, and sensible that 
the design of the contest was not so much to 
know or show me, as to know and show each 
other, came to my relief with the inquiry, ' My 
young brother, do you not think that these are 
subjects about which you would rather pray 
and study for some years to come than to de- 
cide positively now ? ' I replied affirmatively 
and never shall I forget the kindness of this 
most excellent and tender man. 

" I retired from the Council ; who, in a few mo- 
ments, sent for me and formally notified me of 
their unanimous vote that my ordination should 
proceed, and that the services had been arrang- 
ed to take place at two P.M. the following day. 

" Upon the eventful day I could eat no dinner^ 
and suffered from a nervous dread beyond my 
power to express, knowing not how to bear 
the solemn part which was about to devolve 
upon me. The hour, 'the moment, came. The 
house was crowded : galleries, stairs, aisles, door- 
ways, the pulpit steps and all. The faculty of 



50 MEMORIAL. 

Union College, many of the students, and nu- 
merous clergymen from neighboring towns and 
other congregations were present. Dr. Dilloway 
preached from the text, ' This is a true saying, 
If a man desire the office of a bishop, he desir- 
eth a good work.' Rev. Dr. Welch offered the 
ordaining prayer and laid on hands with all the 
ministers present. Rev. Mr. Willey gave the 
charge, and Rev. Mr. Hill the right hand of 
ministerial fellowship. 

" Thus was I by my brethren counted faithful 
and put into the ministry. That God has put 
me there has yet to be proven." 

As a curious coincidence the following Sab- 
bath he administered both the ordinances of 
baptism and the Lord's supper, and married a 
couple in the evening; thus on the first day of 
his official life performing all the duties with 
which his new office invested him. 

This ordination was but the entrance into se- 
verer work ; and it is astonishing the amount of 
labor he was capable of, considering his enfeebled 
condition. His eyes were improving so as to 
admit of a little reading in the early morning ; 



FIRST-FRUITS OF PASTORATE. 5 I 

but for the most part his services were prepared 
in those moments of seclusion when all but 
thought was denied him. Unless one reads 
from the record of his labors in Schenectady as 
presented in his carefully-kept diary, one would 
scarcely credit the amount of work the young 
clergyman accepted and performed. Fifteen 
and frequently twenty sermons a month, with 
lectures and meetings, made up a life too zealous 
and self-sacrificing for his physical good ; yet it 
told grandly on the health of his charge and the 
spiritual condition of his own and neighboring 
communities. 

In the first year of his work the membership of 
the church had doubled. Forty-two had united 
by baptism and seventeen by letter, while the 
church edifice, which for years had shown a beg- 
garly array of empty benches, in two years had 
to be rebuITt and greatly enlarged to accofhmo* 
date the numbers who sought its privileges. 
The record shows, Sabbath after Sabbath, large 
accessions by baptism. On some days, eight, 
ten, twelve, and on one Sabbath, April, 1834, he 
led thirty-eight converts down into the waters of 



52 



MEMORIAL. 



the Mohawk, and buried them into the life and 
likeness of the Saviour. 

On several occasions he was called to neigh- 
boring towns to reap the harvest of his sowing 
there ; even invading other churches whose pas- 
tors, notably Dr. Van Vecton of the Dutch, 
and the Rev. Mr. James of the Presbyterian, 
societies, breaking through the restraints of 
precedent and tradition, had invited him to 
preach to their people. 

The Rev. Dr. Nott, President of Union Col- 
lege, as well as members of the Faculty, had 
from the first taken an active interest in Dr. 
Gillette, often patiently attending his services, 
and finally offering him the privileges of the 
college lectures, which supplemented grandly 
his efforts at improvement so much interfered 
with by his affliction. These privileges were 
about the last he ever enjoyed of university life ; 
although for years afterward he studied as he 
could with tutors, and others who came to his 
study to assist him. 

: It was always a regret to him that he had 
been denied the advantages, of a full academic 



MARRIAGE ENGAGEMENT AND NEW CALL. 53 

and theological course, feeling as though the 
best work that was in him had not had a chance 
to reveal itself. 

In the summer of 1834 his health became 
alarmingly feeble, although his eyes were 
improving. A short vacation was therefore 
planned, and with his friend, the Rev. Dr. 
Welch, he visited Guilford Haven in Connec- 
ticut, returning to his work in September some- 
what improved. 

In November of that year, 1834, he was sent 
by his church on a mission to the churches of 
New York and Philadelphia, to raise funds to 
pay off the debt incurred in the enlargement of 
their house of worship. 

At the house of James Jenkins of the former 
city, he met the lady whom he subsequently 
married, the daughter of his host ; and at the 
latter city he met with such a reception and 
success, that in the following spring, when he 
returned to his own people, he carried with him 
an unaccepted call from the Sansom Street 
church of Philadelphia that he should become 
their pastor, following in that charge such 



54 



MEMORIAL. 



mighty men as Rev. Drs. Staughton and 
Dagg. 

This was no easy matter to decide. It was still 
more hard to leave the people of Schenectady 
where he had found his first home ; but when 
they had finally found an acceptable successor 
in young Mr. Graves, he, in May, 1835, left for 
his new home in Philadelphia. 

Certainly, with all his disadvantages, he left 
behind him a noble record ! In three years and 
a half, a church had been revived, rebuilt, rein- 
habited and more than multiplied. Over two 
hundred had been converted and baptized, 
many joined by letter, and a feeble society of 
less than sixty souls had grown to six hundred. 

Even to one disinterested in the man and his 
work, the record which Dr. Gillette has left in 
his own hand of this his first charge, must ap- 
peal with a pathos and a power overwhelming. 

Most of the time nearly sightless and in pain, 
shut away in darkened chambers communing 
with himself to lift out of his heart the message 
to his people, his hopeless craving for an educa- 
tion, his cruel self-criticism, his struggles to 



CLOSING WORK AT SCHENECTADY. 



55 



win souls, his prayers for strength, his joy at 
success, giving the glory to God — all combine to 
paint the picture of a Christian warfare which 
ended in well-won victory. 

It adds not a little to the merit of his success 
that, during his pastorate here, his salary was ex- 
actly what it had been as a teacher ; his study 
was over a baker's oven ; his wardrobe, one suit 
of clothes, always carefully removed and folded 
when alone in his room ; and of his compensa- 
tion, just one-half was sent regularly to Madison 
University, where his youngest brother, Daniel, 
was preparing for the ministry. Surely, what- 
ever sunshine there was, fell among shadows ! 



V. 

DR. GILLETTE'S PHILADELPHIA PAS- 
TORATE. 

BY HON. HORATIO GATES JONES, LL.D. 

In the early part of 1835, when only twenty- 
eight years of age, Dr. Gillette was called to the 
pastorate of the Fifth Baptist church of Phila- 
delphia ; which, for many years under the name 
of the Sansom Street church, had occupied a 
prominent position among the Philadelphia 
churches. Its first pastor was the celebrated and 
popular Rev. William Staughton, D.D., who 
was regarded as one of the greatest pulpit ora- 
tors of his day in America. The house of worship 
was circular in form, very capacious as to size, 
and was located on Sansom Street above Eighth 
Street, and between Chestnut and Walnut 
Streets. There was no other Baptist church 

then between it and the river Schuylkill. Dr. 
(56) 



PREDECESSORS IN PHILADELPHIA. $J 

Staughton was succeeded by Rev. John L. 
Dagg, D.D., who still survives in a green old 
age, and was the immediate predecessor of Dr. 
Gillette. The church was an offshoot of the 
old First Baptist church, which worshipped in 
Second Street. When Dr. Gillette became its 
pastor, the city began to extend toward the 
north and west, and many of the members were 
living far from the meeting-house. There were 
then, in what is now known as Philadelphia, 
eighteen churches, with a total membership of 
nearly 4,000. The First church, of which the 
distinguished William T. Brantly, D.D., was 
then pastor, had 635 members; the New Market 
(now the Fourth) church, with Joseph H. Ken- 
nard as pastor, had 559 members, while the 
Fifth church had 476. 

Dr. Gillette came in the freshness of youth and 
the earnest zeal of a true minister of Christ. 
His manners then, as they ever continued to be, 
were peculiarly winning, and he was most cor- 
dially welcomed by his brethren. All of the 
city churches, except the First and Lower Dub- 
lin and Frankford, belonged to the venerable 



58 



MEMORIAL. 



Philadelphia Baptist Association. It then com- 
prised among its ministers, Dr. Joseph H. Ken- 
nard, Thomas J. Kitts, of the Second church ; 
William E. Ashton, of the Third ; Dr. Horatio 
Gates Jones, of the Lower Merion ; Joseph 
Walker, of Marcus Hook and Brandywine ; 
Joseph Mathias, of Hilltown, and many others, 
who were earnest, able, and zealous ministers. 
Soon after, Rev. George B. Ide, D.D., became 
pastor of the First church, Rev. Rufus Bab- 
cock, D.D. of Spruce Street, and Rev. Daniel 
Dodge of the Second church. 

The Philadelphia Association was then very 
conservative ; and it was customary to appoint as 
its moderators, clerks, and preachers, only those 
who had been in the body some years. Young 
ministers were allowed to " tarry a while at Jeri- 
cho," as the aged brethren used to say. When 
the rule was deviated from, it was because the 
new pastors were more zealous or had more than 
ordinary talent. The Association was then the 
only arena in which the brethren of the churches 
composing it had an opportunity to meet each 
other. It was there that their abilities were dis- 



WORK IN THE ASSOCIATION. 59 

played, so that its records prove valuable in 
showing the position which ministers and lay- 
men occupied. It is from these records that 
most of the details which follow have been gath- 
ered. A careful examination of the minutes of 
the Association shows that Dr. Gillette, from 
the first year of his connection with that body, 
took a high position in its deliberations ; which he 
ever afterward maintained. His first appearance 
at the Association was in October, 1835, when 
Joseph Mathias was moderator, and Horatio G. 
Jones clerk. He was appointed to preach the 
next introductory sermon, was chosen a trustee 
of Haddington College — an educational institu- 
tion under the care of the Association — and was 
a member of the Committee on Religious Serv- 
ices for 1836. 

In the session of 1836 the religious desti- 
tution of Pennsylvania was a prominent sub- 
ject before the body, and Dr. Gillette was ap- 
pointed, with such able brethren as Drs. Bab- 
cock, Kennard, and H. .G. Jones, and brethren 
Woolsey, Mathias, Jenkins, Lennard,Walker, and 
Joseph Taylor, to represent the Association in a 



6o MEMORIAL. 

convention to organize a General Missionary As- 
sociation for the State. The body was duly 
formed, and he was chosen one of its managers ; 
and so remained until he moved from the State. 
The same year he was elected a manager of the 
American Baptist Publication Society, and was 
re-elected annually for a period of twelve years. 
The Association also appointed him, that same 
year, a member of a committee composed of 
such sound theologians as Mathias, H. G. Jones, 
Babcock, and Kennard, to prepare an abstract of 
the Philadelphia Confession of Faith. For a 
young minister, only two years a member of this 
venerable body, to be thus honored was a very 
unusual thing; but still higher honor awaited 
him. The following year, 1837, he was chosen 
moderator ; a position for which all young minis- 
ters used to sigh, but which was not always to 
be had, as it was usually bestowed on the mid- 
dle-aged or the old ministers. The same year 
he was appointed to prepare the next Circular 
Letter ; which he did, his subject being, " The 
Excellency and Utility of Family Worship.'' 
No wonder that Dr. Gillette loved the Phila- 



RESIGNATION, AND NEW CHURCH FORMED. 6 1 

delphia Association and devoted himself so 
faithfully to its best interests. 

The year 1838 was a new era in his life ; for, 
having resigned the pastorate of the Fifth church, 
and preaching his last sermon Januarys, 1838, 
he left the city for a few months, but was recalled 
May 24th of the same year, to take charge of 
the Eleventh Baptist church, which had been 
organized April 19,1838. It-is unnecessary 
to detail the causes which led to his resignation ; 
but that there was no unpleasant feeling is 
proven by the fact that the Fifth church, on the 
26th of February, granted to 156 of its members 
a general letter of dismission, and in it expressed 
in tender language their sincere regret at the sep- 
aration, and most earnestly invoked the divine 
blessing upon the new enterprise. Besides this, 
when the new church was recognized, among 
those who took part and presented the right 
hand of fellowship was Rev. Joseph A. Warne, 
D.D., who succeeded Dr. Gillette as pastor of 
the Fifth church ; while, in its letter to the As- 
sociation, the Fifth church referred to the fact 
that they had dismissed such a large number of 



62 MEMORIAL. 

their members " to lift anew the banner of Im- 
manuel." From the first the new movement 
was a complete success. The Eleventh church 
worshipped part of the time in a hall at the 
N. E. corner of Eighth and Chestnut, and then 
secured " The Academy Building " in Cherry 
Street above Fifth Street, which they occupied 
until February 18, 1840, when the lecture-room 
of their new house was dedicated by special serv- 
ices. This was located on Twelfth Street, 
above Race, in a very choice locality, the near- 
est Baptist church being on Eighth Street 
above Green. 

. The church was admitted to the Association 
October 20, 1838, with a membership of 190. 
Dr. Babcock, the life-long friend of Dr. Gillette, 
was the moderator, and, in his own impressive 
manner, extended to the new church a most 
cordial welcome to the sisterhood of Baptist 
churches. For the next two years the young 
pastor was full of anxiety and energetic effort. 
He labored night and day; he was literally in- 
stant in season and out of season, trying to 
secure the means to complete the commodious 



SUCCESS AT ELEVENTH BAPTIST CHURCH. 63 

edifice then in process of erection. At that 
time there were very few rich members in the 
Baptist churches, but his trust was in the Lord, 
who had promised never to desert or fail those 
who put their trust in Him. While this ma- 
terial work was going on, the spiritual interests 
of the church were also progressing, for the let- 
ter to the Association in 1838 states that from 
the date of the constitution, April 19th, to Sept. 
27th, but little more than five months, 30 had 
been baptized, and 7 received by letter ; the 
Sunday-school numbered 150 scholars, with 20 
teachers, and nearly 400 volumes in the li- 
brary. During this time, while the lecture- 
room was being built, meetings were held at 5 
o'clock P.M. on Lord's days, on the large lot 
adjacent, until cold weather, and were always 
largely attended. Each year there were acces- 
sions to the church, but the largest number of 
baptisms was in 1840, when 102 were reported 
to the Association. Such approval of his min- 
istry by the Master encouraged him to still 
greater exertions, and he seemed to rejoice 
when he was pressed with engagements arising 



64 . MEMORIAL. 

from his connection with the numerous socie- 
ties of the city and State. But Nature's laws 
can not be broken without punishment, and al- 
though Dr. Gillette was told that he was doing 
too much, and was endangering his health, he 
could not give up the loved employ, until, in 
1842, the crisis came, and he was stricken down 
and became dangerously ill ; so much so that he 
was unable to attend the Association, although 
it met with his own church. Happily, his life 
was spared, and when permission was given by 
his physician, he resumed his labors with more 
caution, but with his usual earnestness. His 
associational work still continued. One year 
he and Dr. Shadrach made a lengthy report on 
the importance of Sunday-schools as nurseries 
of the churches, and they recommended " the 
formation of an American Baptist Sabbath-school 
Union," and the appointment of a committee 
to represent the Association in a General Coun- 
cil, to be held in New York at the time of our 
usual anniversary meetings. The report was 
adopted, and Dr. Gillette, with Brethren Shad- 
rach, Babcock, Dodge, Mathias, Kennard, Lin- 



PREPARES " CENTURY MINUTES." 



nard, Woolsey, and H. G. Jones, were appointed 
as the committee. The following year he, as 
chairman, made another report on Sunday- 
schools, as full of earnest appeals as the pre- 
vious one. His zeal in behalf of everything 
which pertained to the advancement of the 
cause of religion made him prominent ; and in 
1844 he was chosen assistant-clerk of the As- 
sociation. The next year George I. McLeod, 
the Stated Clerk, having resigned, Dr. Gillette 
was appointed his successor ; which new position 
brought with it additional cares and duties as 
well as honor, and which led him to value, as 
he had not done before, the importance of gath- 
ering into a permanent form the annual letters 
from the churches, and the other records of the 
venerable body which had so honored him. He 
also introduced and sent to the churches a 
blank form for the associational letter, which 
has now become so common and useful in many 
Associations. As early as 1843, Mr. McLeod, 
the Clerk, reported that many of the minutes of 
the Association, manuscript as well as printed, 
had been secured from the family of the Rev. 



66 



MEMORIAL. 



Samuel Jones, D.D., who was one of the most 
prominent members of the body, and it was 
then resolved that the records for the first hun- 
dred years of the Association should be pub- 
lished under the direction of Brethren A. D. 
Gillette, Daniel Dodge, Joseph H. Kennard, 
Franklin Lee, and George I. McLeod. As 
chairman of the committee, the , chief labor de- 
volved on Dr. Gillette. To him it was a pure 
labor of love, and each year found him with 
added treasures of old manuscripts and early 
minutes. Rev. H. G. Jones, D.D., as one of 
the oldest ministers, and one who had written, 
in 1832, a History of the Philadelphia Baptist 
Association, was added to the committee, but 
it was not until 185 1 that the work was com- 
pleted. Dr. Gillette was appointed the editor; 
a .preface to the work was written by Dr. 
Jones, then quite advanced in years ; and the 
il Century Minutes " were published by order 
of the Association. Speaking of this volume, 
the Rev. Thomas Winter, D.D., still living at 
the age of 85 years, with mind clear and vigor- 
ous, thus writes : " Dr. Gillette arranged and 



VALUE OF THE PUBLICATION. 6j 

edited the Century Minutes, a handsome vol- 
ume of 476 pp., embracing the records of the 
venerable body from its organization in 1707 to 
1807. The work was well done by our brother, 
and its merits were duly acknowledged. The 
book preserves a large amount of Baptist 
Church history of the eighteenth century, and 
will long be a monument of the Christian piety, 
the sober intelligence, the faith and the sta- 
bility of our more ancient Baptist brethren. It 
will long survive, and will be a valuable book of 
reference to all who feel an interest in the 
doings of the Philadelphia Baptist Association, 
the venerable mother of all the orthodox as- 
sociations of the land ; which now number 83 
churches, 106 ordained ministers, and 23,984 
members." To this able, truthful, and honest 
testimony, may as truthfully be added, that 
next to the works of Isaac- Backus and Morgan 
Edwards, the "Century Minutes "of the Phila- 
delphia Baptist Association will, prove to be 
the most important contribution to our early 
Baptist literature. The name of A. D. Gillette 
will never be forgotten by" American Baptists, 



68 MEMORIAL. 

and as the years go on, the value of his histori- 
cal labors will be more and more appreciated. 

Dr. Gillette was also deeply interested in the 
subject of ministerial education. He united with 
his aged friend, Dr. Jones, of the Lower Meroin 
church, who loved the pastor of the Eleventh 
church as if he had been his own son, in the 
efforts which were being made by the Associa- 
tion to prevent the hasty admission to the min- 
istry of those unfitted for the high office of 
teachers of divine truth. Hence he advocated 
the formation of the Pennsylvania Baptist Edu- 
cation Society, and was a Manager of its Board 
as early as 1839, its Recording Secretary in 
1844, and President of the Society in 1850 and 
185 1. But amid all these public engagements 
he never neglected his church. Its interests 
were first in his heart, and the steady increase 
of the membership from 156 when the church 
was organized, to 578 when he resigned, showed 
that the Lord had prospered him in his labors. 

As a pastor while in Philadelphia, Dr. Gillette 
excelled. He always regarded it as a privilege 
to visit his people, to learn their wants; their 



PASTORAL VIRTUES. 69 

trials and sorrows. This fitted him for his pul- 
pit work. His words encouraged the despond- 
ing, and gave hope and comfort to the dying. 
As Goldsmith has said : 

" Beside the bed where parting" life was laid, 
And sorrow, guilt, and pain by turns dismay 'd 
The reverend preacher stood. At his control, 
Despair and anguish fled the struggling soul. 
Comfort came down the trembling wretch to raise, 
And his last faltering accents whisper'd praise. 
Thus to relieve the wretched was his pride, 
And e'en his failings lean'd to virtue's side ; 
But in his duty, prompt at every call, 
He watch'd and wept, he pray'd and felt for all." 

There was a peculiar magnetism in his man- 
ner which drew people to him and made them 
feel that he was their sympathizing friend. 
None went to him for comfort without realiz- 
ing that his heart felt for them. His presence, 
whether in the sick-room or in the prayer- 
meeting or the crowded assembly, was like a 
perpetual benediction. He had about him in 
all the relations of life the true savoir faire ; a 
quality which so few ministers possess. Dr. 
Gillette was a Christian gentleman, and so im- 
pressed all who had the pleasure of his acquaint- 



70 



MEMORIAL. 



ance. The venerable Dr. Thomas Winter, who, 
when pastor of the Rbxborough Baptist church, 
knew Dr. Gillette well, in writing to me of him 
as a minister, says : " In the relation of pastor 
he was highly esteemed and greatly beloved by 
his people. I never, that I remember, heard 
him spoken of by one of his members or others 
but in terms of respect and with great cordiality. 
How could it have been otherwise? He served 
them well and faithfully, and with gratifying 
success. He was a man of very comely and 
engaging appearance, bland and courteous, 
pleasant and winning in his intercourse with 
others, and obliging and benignant to all. His 
preaching talent, if not of the first order, was 
good and edifying, and was listened to with 
pleasure by well -cultivated minds; and what 
was of more account, was owned of God his 
Divine Master in leading many souls to Christ." 
As was said of the late Dr. James B. Taylor, 
of Richmond, Va., so it may be truly said of 
Dr. Gillette, " He had a gentle spirit, and the 
most winning manners, and a voice which was 
music in itself. These qualities fitted him for 



SOCIAL ATTRACTIONS. ft 

pastoral duties, in which he took great pleasure. 
It may be truthfully said of him that, like his 
Divine Master, he fed his flock like a shepherd; 
gathering the lambs to his arms, and he was 
able to call them all by name." 

In the social circles of Philadelphia Dr. 
Gillette was ever a welcome guest, and the 
cordial reception always extended to him testi- 
fied the regard in which he was held by all with 
whom he associated. Nor was this feeling con- 
fined to his Baptist frien'ds, but he was held in 
high esteem by other Christian churches ; for, 
although a firm and decided Baptist, he allowed 
to others the same privilege he claimed for him- 
self, and accorded to them a sincerity in their 
belief. 

In 185 1 he tendered his resignation as stated 
Clerk of the Association, and that body passed 
the following resolution : 

"Resolved, That the thanks of this Association are due 
and are hereby tendered to Bro. A. D. Gillette for the 
manner in which he has for several years performed the 
duties of stated Clerk of this Association." 

In 1852, after a pastorate of over fourteen 



72 MEMORIAL. 

years, Dr. Gillette felt that it was his duty to 
seek another field of labor, and accordingly ad- 
dressed the following letter to. the church ; for 
which I am indebted to Rev. I. Newton Ritner, 
the present pastor : 

"Philadelphia, July 22, 1852. 

" Respected Brethren and Friends : By a prayer- 
ful, and, to myself, a very painful process of inquiry, 1 have 
arrived at the conclusion that it is my duty to resign the 
pastoral care which I have so long held by your suffrages. 
I expect, in the event of this my resignation being accept- 
ed, to take charge of the Broadway Baptist church in the 
city of New York. 

" The office I now resign and the relation to be dissolved 
was never dearer to myself and family than at this moment. 
During the more than fourteen years which we have passed 
together, we have lived in love. That we may part in love 
and ever rejoice in each other's prosperity, is my sincere 
and earnest prayer. 

"Yours in the Gospel, A. D. Gillette." 

On the 26th of July a special business meet- 
ing of the church and congregation was held, 
when the letter was read to the church.' A mo- 
tion to accept the resignation having failed to 
carry, a committee of Deacons was appointed 
to visit the pastor, and on their return reported 
that " Brother Gillette had accepted the call to 



RESIGNATION AND CHURCH REGRETS. 73 

become the pastor of the Broadway Baptist 
church, New York, and it was his desire that 
he should be dismissed." There was only one 
course to pursue, and hence the resolution de- 
clining to accept the resignation was recon- 
sidered, and the church adopted unanimously 
the following resolutions ; which were offered by 
Deacon Levi Knowles, who has been the warm 
and loving friend of Dr. Gillette from the or- 
ganization of the Eleventh church until the 
beloved pastor was taken home to the Church 
triumphant : 

"Resolved, That the resignation of Rev. A. D. Gillette 
as our pastor be accepted, to take effect on the 31st inst., 
his salary to be continued to the 31st of August. 

" Resolved, That the connection of more than fourteen 
years' standing has not been dissolved without the most 
painful emotions. We have lived and loved together, and 
no consideration but his stern sense of duty prompts us 
to acquiesce. 

"Resolved, That Bro. Gillette needs no eulogy from us. 
His courteous deportment, Christian counsels, and his 
faithful preaching have won him friends both here and 
elsewhere. We only say, may the blessing of the Highest 
rest upon him." 



Meanwhile the congregation was assembled 



.74 MEMORIAL. 

in an adjoining room, and when the church 
clerk announced the final action of the churchy 
they refused to accept the resignation, declar- 
ing they had received no good reason from the 
pastor or the church why he should leave them; 
but finally they gave their reluctant consent to 
the separation. And so, amid the tears and re- 
grets and good wishes of all his dear people, he 
bade them adieu. He had the regard of all his 
brother ministers, the confidence of the entire 
community, and the high respect of all who 
knew him. 

During his pastorate he baptized 488 and 
received by letter (including the constituents) 
572, making a total of 1,060 members. The 
entire membership at the close of his services 
was 563. 

I have stated that Dr. Gillette was the editor 
of the "Century Minutes" of the Association. 
The only other volume he wrote while at Phila- 
delphia was "A Sketch .of the Labors, Suffer- 
ings, and Death of the Rev. Adoniram Judson, 
D.D.," which was published in 185 1. It was 
through his -efforts.. that Dr.. Judson visited. the 



DR. JUDSON HIS GUEST. 75 

Philadelphia churches. He made his home with 
one of Dr. Gillette's members, and was on terms 
of warm intimacy with him, and while visiting 
at the house of Dr. Gillette met Miss Emily 
Chubbuck, w r ho afterward became his wife. 
Referring to this event, Dr. Judson, in a letter 
to his friend, said, " I never cease to thank God 
that I found her, accidentally as it were, under 
your roof." When the sad news of Dr. Judson 's 
death came over the waters, he resolved to im- 
prove the event for the good of the living, and 
prepared and preached a discourse which, as 
above stated, was published by him. 

The sad tidings of Dr. Gillette's death brought 
sorrow to many a home in Philadelphia, and 
filled with sadness the hearts of all his early 
friends who still survived. " The memory of 
the just is blessed," and he who so loved to 
work in the Master's vineyard is now at rest. 
He is not dead ; for, as the poet says : 

" To live in hearts we leave behind 
Is not to die." .... 



VL 

DR. GILLETTE'S NEW YORK PAS- 
TORATE. 

BY REV. DR. THOS. ARMITAGE. 

Dr. Gillette began his pastoral work in New 
York in 1852, the membership of what was 
then the " Broadway Baptist church " numbering 
only one hundred and seventy, but being much 
more energetic and self-sacrificing than was the 
wont of that day. The demands of business 
were pressing upon Broadway so fast and heavi- 
ly, that a removal of the church became neces- 
sary. This change enabled it to discharge a 
somewhat heavy debt, to erect a more conven- 
ient meeting-house, and, in the outgrowth of the 
city, to secure a much more central position for 
the future ; as Twenty-third Street and its vi- 
cinity were then new. For some time the new 
(76) 



FIRST PREACHING IN NEW YORK. JJ 

pastor filled the pulpit of the Tabernacle church 
in Second Avenue while its afflicted pastor, 
Rev. Dr. Lathrop, was sick and in Europe. 
There he preached to very large congregations, 
and with great success, for every Baptist heart 
in New York welcomed him as a valuable addi- 
tion to our ministry and a gift from God. 

May 7, 1854, the Broadway Baptist church en- 
tered their new sanctuary, a capacious and beau- 
tiful edifice, and Bro. Gillette's career in New- 
York was fairly begun. The large congregations 
which attended his ministry, the facility with 
which he turned his hand and heart to all sorts 
of religious and benevolent work, together with 
his unselfish, genial, and brotherly spirit, soon 
made his influence felt, not only in his own de- 
nomination, but amongst all who love our Lord 
Jesus. In those days there was but little inti- 
macy between our denomination and others ; and 
indeed, but few ties knit any of the great Chris- 
tian bodies one to the other. In fact, the va- 
rious sects had been much disturbed by internal 
dissensions, and were hardly at peace among 
themselves. For years the Episcopalians had 



78 / MEMORIAL, 

been agitated by the controversies arising out 
.of the trial of Bishop Onderdonk, and certain 
other ecclesiastical questions springing from the 
tractarian movement. The Presbyterians were 
divided into the New and Old Schools, and the 
Methodists were engaged in warm disputes con- 
cerning the slavery question, and various impor- 
tant internal changes affecting their government. 
And as to the Baptists of the city there was lit- 
tle cohesion in their ranks. Certain old aliena- 
tions existed between the churches growing out 
of differences which led to the formation of two 
separate associations forty years before, and 
these had been aggravated by the more recent 
divisions in our University and. Bible work. 
Taking all things into account, there was as 
little oneness of feeling and co-operation be- 
tween the several denominations, and in these 
individual bodies, as there well could be. 

The coming of Dr. Gillette to the city was 
marked by a most healthy influence both in 
healing the alienations of his own brethren, and 
in drawing Christians of various names together 
in certain orders of religious work. He had not 



ASIDE FROM LOCAL CONTROVERSIES. 79 

■been a party to any of the vexed questions 
which had disturbed the New York churches ; he 
had neither received nor inflicted wounds ; and 
coming to his work with a warm, fresh, and 
simple heart, he had access to the sympathies of 
all. His nature was full of sunshine, his man- 
ners were affable, and his temper soft and grace- 
ful. Then, he possessed a large measure of 
common sense, with a yielding disposition which 
commended him to the affections of all manly 
men. God had endowed him with an instinct- 
ive shrinking from unlovely combat, a quick 
eye to read the tendencies and temperaments of 
those around him, and with a remarkably con- 
ciliating manner ; and, what was better than all, 
he was a stranger to the tricks of petty meanness, 
because in him was no guile. .' He was not en- 
dowed with the qualities of a great leader, but 
he possessed the simple-heartedness of a child. 
He might be imposed upon by .the wily, for he 
was unsuspecting ; but he could impose upon 
nobody, for in malice he was a babe. 

This unusual blending of gifts and graces gave 
great unity to his character and left it of a dis- 



80 MEMORIAL. 

tinct type in its own order. Hence, wherever he 
went he carried with him a winsome atmosphere 
that entirely disarmed suspicion. It was the lot 
of the writer to serve with him on all sorts of 
committees, in boards of various kinds, in coun- 
cils and associations ; sometimes to preside 
while he was on the floor, and sometimes to act 
in deliberation or debate while he was in the 
chair. Then our lot would be cast in the same 
pulpit, as preachers, or on the same platform, as 
speakers; possibly to take different views and 
positions on the same subject. But never was 
it my misfortune to hear a hard word from his 
lips, or to witness in him a harsh, much less a 
churlish action. Now and then, an experienced 
eye would read him sorely tried, and even hurt 
in his feelings ; but memory furnishes no case 
where his spirit or manner met the occasion in 
a way unworthy of the Lamb of God, whose he 
was and whom he served. In the pulpit, in the 
presiding officer's chair, in the assemblies of his 
own church for consultation, or wherever else he 
met his brethren, his unaffected suavity endear- 
ed him to them. And for the same reasons, he 



CONVERSATIONAL ATTRACTIVENESS. 8 1 

was a charm in all social circles. Full of anec- 
dote, very communicative and observant, culti- 
vated in conversational powers, he always at- 
tracted the confiding and affectionate toward 
him, and especially the young. Refined and 
open-hearted, they approached him with confi- 
dence and heart-felt respect, unchecked by that 
awful sanctimony which makes so many minis- 
ters pious frights, when it fails to set them up 
as solemn laughing-stocks. The consequence 
was, that there was not a home in which he was 
known to which he was not welcome, nor a cir- 
cle of friends where his presence was not hailed 
as a ray of sunshine, no matter what the culture 
or status of the company might be. As pastors, 
none of us felt the slightest reluctance to ask any 
favor of him that he could grant, for it was nei- 
ther denied nor granted in a grudging manner. 
He was ever ready to counsel with his brethren 
in difficulty, to supply a pulpit in time of need, 
to aid in Sunday-school or other anniversaries 
for promoting the interests of their congrega- 
tions, or to sympathize with them in their per- 
sonal sorrows. 
6 



82 MEMORIAL. 

As a preacher and pastor he rose far above 
mediocrity, and was highly prized by his con- 
gregation. His sermons were marked not so 
much either for profundity or strong grasp in 
the treatment of a theme, as for clearness of 
arrangement, thorough fidelity to evangelical 
truth, and a sweet, earnest method of delivery. 
They cost him great labor, albeit, and the ex- 
ercise of great conscientiousness in their prep- 
aration. In a brief diary which he kept he 
speaks frequently of " hard digging " and " great 
exhaustion " in creating a sermon, on such and 
such a passage. And quite as often does he 
speak of prostrating indisposition after preach- 
ing them, when sleep would depart from his 
eyes for the better part of the night, when 
appetite failed him, and the nervous shock 
would cleave to him for days together. He 
was extremely nervous, and was greatly and 
easily affected by outward circumstances. He 
makes frequent record of the state of the 
weather, and the number of his congregation, as 
exerting a depressing or exhilarating influence 
over him. In recording the doings of the Sab- 



THE PASTOR'S PULPIT TRIALS. 83 

bath, he seldom fails to tell of the weather. 
Now the "rain filled .the pools"; now the 
" March winds " blew furiously ; and the " snow " 
blinded the eyes and blocked the street. Then, 
the day was so unendurably hot that he well- 
nigh fainted, or so beautiful, bright, and bracing 
that it seemed to be shed out of an angel's 
bosom who was too happy to hold it longer. 
And, at these times, the state of the congrega- 
tion is carefully entered. One day the house is 
" crowded," and he had a delightful time in 
preaching on " The Fruits of the Spirit," 
" Christ our Life," or, " The Commandment 
came home, sin revived, and I died." And, on 
more than one occasion, those delectable saints 
in New York who are sure that the pastor will 
fill his place nobly if they stay at home to cod- 
dle the earthly house of their tabernacle, get 
such a good hearty remembrance from Brother 
Gillette's pen, as draws forth the " Amen " of 
all the pastors. 

Then, it is easy to trace his sense of delicacy 
and disappointment in connection with his Sab- 
bath services. At one time he would go to his 



84 MEMORIAL. 

pulpit glowing with his subject, and expecting 
to preach; but behold, some injudicious "dea- 
con " or friend would thrust upon him a " strange 
brother" who was on a visit, and out of pure 
politeness the pastor asked him to preach, when 
he really wished that the man would have relig- 
ion enough to say " No/' Then he records 
the grumbling of his congregation as the result ; 
" He might do better than I could, yet he was 
not the one many came to hear." And as if he 
wished the very best of authority for allowing 
himself to think even such slight heresy as this, 
he quotes Dr. Cone as saying : " During forty 
years' experience I have been learning that the 
way to get and keep a congregation is to do 
one's own work in the pulpit, when health and 
Providence permit." 

He was thoroughly conscientious in the selec- 
tion of his subjects, and deeply anxious that his 
hearers should be benefited. Although the 
fruits of his ministry were large, as seen in the 
number of persons converted to Christ under 
his preaching, yet at times he was greatly cast 
down in view of the few who were saved. At 



SYMPATHY AND SPIRITUAL YEARNING. 85 

the close of one year he says : " I have never 
known so few converted under my ministry in 
the same length of time as last year. Yet, I 
never had better audiences or greater pecuniary 
prosperity. O Lord, show me my errors and 
my deficiencies. Show my dear people where- 
fore Thou hidest Thy face from them, why Thou 
dost not appear in the power of Thy Spirit, to 
draw more hearts to Thee. Am I as consecra- 
ted as Thou demandest? " 

The entries which he makes concerning the 
sick of his congregation, and the families whose 
dead he had buried, show him to have been very 
tender-hearted and sympathetic in his pastoral 
work out of the pulpit. The severe illness of a 
dear friend, either in New York or Philadel- 
phia, or even the loss of a child in a home 
where he administered pastoral consolation, 
drew forth from him the most touching private 
utterances, as well as those which were tendered 
at the numerous funerals which he conducted. 
And, in health and prosperity no man rejoiced 
more than he with the healthful and prosperous. 
A happy, warm, and pure-souled pastor was he, 



86 MEMORIAL. 

in the flock of Jesus Christ. But often he did 
his work at the cost of heavy draughts upon his 
physical strength. Certain infirmities cleaved 
to his frame for years, which not unfrequently 
prostrated him, and sometimes made his life 
very uncertain ; while they always kept his 
health in a precarious state, so that he needed 
great fortitude to endure his work and remain 
at his post. 

As a patriot, his country lay near his heart. 
That terrible struggle through which our coun- 
try passed in perpetuating its unity, cost him 
immense pain. He complains of great depres- 
sion of spirit, and of the sad state of things dis- 
turbing his repose of mind in preparation for 
the pulpit. And with all his pensive affection 
for hosts of devoted friends on both sides of the 
lines, he suffered unutterable griefs so long as 
the contest lasted. But he was true to the de- 
mands of loyalty, and stood firmly to his con- 
victions of right, giving his prayers and influ- 
ence to the Government, and his offspring, four 
sons, to the field, with unflinching integrity. 
Yet, his heart bounded for joy when blood 



THE RIGHTEOUS AS THE PALM-TREE. 87 

ceased to flow, and when the Union was reknit 
for common weal or woe. 

This lovely spirit blessed our earth for sev- 
enty years ; and, possibly, no Scriptural symbol 
so well expresses his life as that of the Psalmist : 
"The righteous shall flourish as the palm- 
tree"; in constancy, patience, fruitfulness, and 
victory. This beautiful tree reaches maturity 
at thirty, continues in full strength at seventy, 
and bears from fifteen to twenty clusters of 
dates annually, till it reaches about its two hun- 
dredth year. All this time, it lifts its head high 
toward heaven, bears the buffeting of every, 
kind of storm, and keeps its foliage perpetually 
green. We may see our glorified brother's 
semblance to it, in his firm uprightness, his or- 
derly regularity, his graceful beauty, his em- 
bowering shade, and his large fruitfulness. 
Such amplitude of growth, elasticity of fiber, 
and varied fertility were found in him, as justi- 
fied the outlay of seventy years upon his ma- 
turity. Like the palm-tree, all Dr. Gillette's in- 
fluences were healthy and useful. The fruit of 



88 MEMORIAL. 

this Eastern blessing makes a great part of the 
diet of the people ; the pit of the fruit is ground 
up for food for the camel ; its leaves are made 
into couches, baskets, mats, bags, and brushes ; 
its boughs are used for fences, its fibers for the 
ropes and rigging of small vessels ; its sap is dis- 
tilled into wine or condensed into honey ; and 
its wood is made into light structures. The 
Orientals celebrate its virtues both in poetry 
and prose, and never weary of its praise, for 
they attribute to it three hundred and fifty dif- 
ferent uses. 

Then, when its trunk dies and moulders into 
dust, so that all which is left is a bushel or two 
of dry ashes ; by and by a new, green shoot 
springs up in the midst of the heap, eats up and 
consumes into itself the old growth, and goes 
on to perpetuate its existence for two hundred 
years longer. How much like this was our 
beautiful brother; for, in the churches which 
he served, and in the ministry which he hon- 
ored, many a beautiful young branch has sprung 
up, and now flourishes in his place. So, his life 



FULL OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. 89 

will repeat itself amongst us, and numbers of 
fruitful trees of Jehovah's planting will but per- 
petuate the blessings begun in the life of Dr. 
Gillette : " A good man, full of faith and of 
the Holy Spirit." 



VII. 

DR. GILLETTE'S WASHINGTON PAS- 
TORATE. 

BY HIS PREDECESSOR AND LIFE-LONG FRIEND, 
DR. G. W. SAMSON. 

" THE steps of a good man are ordered by 
the Lord." So wrote that chief-chosen king of 
Israel, the specially select ancestor of Israel's 
greater king; in whose history so much appears 
which compels the inquiry, " Who is the good 
man ? " A sincere and aspiring young man once 
asked of an earnest preacher, after a discourse 
which had moved a thousand hearers : " Pray ex- 
plain how it could be that David was called ; a 
man after God's own heart ' when he was betray- 
ed into the greatest of vices and crimes ? " The 
reply was that he was not an angel after God's 
heart ; that to manifest His moral power and 
love, God makes men of the strongest earthly im- 
(90) 



STEPS OF GOOD MEN ORDERED. 91 

pulses in order to show how His grace can rule 
all these impulses and mould such men so as to 
become His fit instruments in reaching those 
who need a helper of like nature with them- 
selves. Angels were not chosen as Christ's 
agents in man's redemption ; for Christ himself 
was " able to succor them that are tempted," only 
because " He himself was tempted in all points 
like as we are." Dr. Gillette has been seen to 
have been a good man, because goodness is not 
negative ; and because with impulses controlled, 
he had realized David's aspiration to " walk at 
liberty " in the way of self-restraint. There was, 
therefore, no class of men and no difference of 
opinions that he could not meet unruffled, and 
conquer by " stooping." 

Dr. Gillette's steps were " ordered by the 
Lord," in his coming to Washington ; for Prov- 
idence directed this, as all his former pastoral 
connections. One of the trials of a true Chris- 
tian pastor is this : that he of all other profes- 
sional men, with rare exceptions, is not permit- 
ted to live and die in one location. There are 
as manv different missions for an eminent 



92 MEMORIAL. 

preacher and a faithful pastor, as there are stages 
of development in intellectual and moral life ; 
and it is the convincing proof that the call to the 
Christian ministry is a special and Divine calling 
because of the superior usefulness of the men by 
whom the ministry is not sought as a life of 
uninterrupted social congenialities. That is a 
rare exception in which a Christian minister does 
not in any one community outlive his usefulness. 
Young Gillette at Schenectady, as a student 
popular with the faculty and his fellow-students 
of Union College, brought a moral support to 
the little band of Baptists, which a man of ma- 
ture mind, but restricted social relations, could 
not have attained. As a young pastor in Phil- 
adelphia, Mr. Gillette was the man specially fit- 
ted to break up the control of old and old-coun- 
try prejudices which prevented the Baptist 
sentiment from taking hold of minds outside the 
pale of its restricted intercourse ; and the influ- 
ence of the young pastor promoted, if it did not 
begin, that increase of churches in Philadelphia 
which has been a wonder to other American 
cities. It was again the intelligent conviction 



CALL TO WASHINGTON. 93 

and firm course of Dr. Gillette in his mature 
years, as to questions of Mission and Bible work, 
(the special intimate as he had been of foreign 
missionaries and the confidant of their real senti- 
ments on many disputed topics,) that made his 
coming to New York a God-send ; so that the very 
men from whom he most differed, were the most 
outspoken in attesting that he was " a good 
man "; and that as such his " steps were ordered 
by the Lord " in his New York pastorate. His 
coming to Washington was especially such a Di- 
vine ordering ; as was attested by his relations to 
the church, to the community, to the interests 
of education and philanthropy, to the demands of 
the National Government, and to the harmony 
of religious associations, North and South, 
which had their centre at the national capital. 

It was on the 17th of January, 1864, that Dr. 
Gillette entered on the duties' of pastor of the 
First Baptist church, Washington, D. C, to 
which office he had been invited December 6, 
1863. Its history dated back to the year 1802 ; 
for three years it was weak ; but from 1805, up 
to 1850, for forty-five years, its only pastor had 



94 MEMORIAL. 

been Rev. O. B. Brown, of New Jersey. A man 
of rare intellectual ability, of profound Calvin- 
istic views, yet alive to the interests of educa- 
tion and of missions, his resort, at first necessary, 
to secular employ as a clerk in Government 
service, greatly restricted the commanding in- 
fluence which he otherwise would have exerted. 
At the extreme portion of the city, near the 
Navy Yard, a small band had been gathered in 
1822; but for many years efforts had failed to 
organize a successful church in the heart of the 
growing city. In 1842, the E Street church be- 
gan its successful career. Ten years later a 
colony from this church succeeded in erecting 
an elegant house of worship on 13th Street. 
The pressure of debt on that church in i860' 
led to an effort to unite with it the First church ; 
of which for ten years Rev. S. P. Hill, D.D., had 
been the admired pastor and preacher, but 
whose field was restricted by the foreign ele- 
ment which had grown up around its house of 
worship. The successful accomplishment of 
this union, the divided political sentiment which 
had been growing since the separation, in 1845, 



HISTORY OF FIRST CHURCH. 95 

of the Northern and Southern churches in mis- 
sion work, and the threatened rupture of the 
Union on the election of Abraham Lincoln in 
the autumn of i860, led to the resignation of 
both pastors. This was followed by the employ, 
supposed to be temporary, of the former pastor 
of the E Street church ; who one year before, 
in 1859, na< 3 become president of the Columbian 
College, D. C. This connection, contrary to 
expectation, had lasted more than three years ; 
the decided social predilections of two radically 
opposite classes in the church forbidding the 
hope of union on any pastor supposed to repre- 
sent a section. 

To his predecessor in that pastorate, the 
knowledge that Dr. Gillette might listen to a 
call, was both a pleasure and a relief. From the 
first assuming of the position the understanding 
with the temporary pastor was fixed and on both 
sides faithfully carried out, that, while three- 
fourths of his salary was provided by the college 
and one-fourth by the church, the remaining 
three-fourths should be devoted to the debt on 
the house. In the spring of 1862, the spire of 



C)6 MEMORIAL. 

the beautiful edifice was caught in the very cen- 
tre of the whirl of a tornado, which rocked other 
spires a little out of its track ; with a crash the 
spire had been dashed back on the main edifice, 
crushing the walls down to the main floor, and 
leaving only the basement intact. The use of 
several churches was offered, and that of the 
New York Avenue Presbyterian church, Rev. 
Dr. Gurley's, where President Lincoln attended, 
was accepted ; but only for a few weeks, since, on 
the day after the destruction, plans for rebuild- 
ing were immediately formed and were pushed to 
completion. When the walls were up and the 
roof on, the sudden demand for hospital accom- 
modations required that four or five church ed- 
ifices be surrendered ; the position of the Presi- 
dent seemed to require that the church he attend- 
ed should be made an example ; the order for its 
occupation had been given by the Secretary of 
War ; when the First Baptist church, whose 
house was just in condition not to be injured, 
was pressed on the acceptance of the Secretary 
in place of the one chosen. When Dr. Gillette 
was invited to visit the church, the house had 



SONS IN THE ARMY. 97 

been for some weeks vacated ; it was approach- 
ing completion ; its debt had been considerably 
reduced and the new expense met ; and its in- 
come was free for a pastor's support. The per- 
sonal acquaintance which made the succession 
specially coveted, began in 1843, when in the 
midst of a work of Divine grace, continued for 
some years in the E Street church, two earnest 
pastors of Philadelphia, Rev. Messrs. Kennard 
and Gillette, were invited to conduct a series of 
daily religious services with the First Baptist 
church. The younger of the two invited preach- 
ers and the young pastor of the E Street church, 
though separated in early educational advantages 
by the widest extremes, were drawn together 
by ties of congeniality which lasted through 
life ; which led to family intercourse whose in- 
fluence left its indelible impress on susceptible 
children ; which was followed, especially during 
Dr. Gillette's New York pastorate, by frequent 
pulpit interchanges whose fruit was lasting ; and 
which, amid the harrowing years of the war, 
when all Dr. Gillette's sons were in posts of duty 
most exposed, and. two were prisoners, one at 
7 



98 MEMORIAL. 

Richmond and another in Texas, permitted the 
exercise of an influence, through the chief author- 
ities behind both contending lines, whose mem- 
ory is as true and pure as its exertion was at the 
time appreciated by all parties interested. It 
was not a difficult effort to commend to the 
hearts of a worthy church, a man who like Dr. 
Gillette had determined to know only as preach- 
er and pastor that common Master around 
whom true disciples never fail to unite. 

The words of David were never more truly 
exemplified than when the steps of Dr. 
Gillette were directed to the relief of one 
who had so long sought to fill a double office, 
and to meet the demands of many delicate pub- 
lic duties unknown to any but the few on whom 
the heaviest national responsibilities rested. 
Few men whose sons were grown and all in the 
Union army breathed such a spirit of gentleness 
and Christian love, that he was alike acceptable 
to men of the strongest Northern and Southern 
social affinities. Dr. Gillette was called by 
Providence to this new and trying field. Be- 
fore fully accepting the call, Dr. Gillette had 



CARES OF PASTORATE. 99 

spent two Sabbaths, December 4th and nth, 
1863, with the church, and in his journal he 
dwells on the interest mutually awakened, and on 
his regret at leaving in New York his " united and 
intelligent people "; he refers specially to the 
fact that with all the three former pastors of the 
First Baptist church, Washington, he had been 
an esteemed co-worker, while two of them would 
remain as members of the church, and his sup- 
porters ; and he writes as if he felt it to be sig- 
nificant, in alluding to the hcuse : " It is large 
enough, with no side galleries to gape in empti- 
ness upon me." 

The new cares of his Washington pastorate, 
which he could not escape, began at once to wear 
on him. After three or four Sabbaths, in part- 
ing from his old church in New York, at the 
close of his first day's labors in Washington, 
January 17, 1864, he writes: "Am not well, 
and can not get to sleep till after tossing for 
hours." Among these anxieties family cares 
had their share. He often alludes to his " dear 
boys," all of whom were for a time in the war, 
while two, whom he delights to speak of as 

Lore. 



IOO MEMORIAL. 

" noble boys and brave," sent letters from pris- 
on and field, their cheerful hope seeming to be 
his greatest comfort. His u only dear daughter, 
Grade," still at school in Philadelphia, is warm- 
ly mentioned and often visited. So, there was 
to him "a joy amid distress." That the anxi- 
eties of a father were chief, every one sees ; " the 
eldest, Capt. James Gillette, a veteran of many 
battles," he writes, " is in the army of the Cum- 
berland"; and the second, " Daniel Gano Gil- 
lette, a captive in Texas, is as noble and brave 
a boy as ever met a foe." 

Yet there is more sunshine than cloud gleam- 
ing through his sky. When after three months 
his family is gathered, he speaks with delight of 
the "good day" enjoyed April I, 1864, when 
his theme was " Jesus in the midst "; after 
which the late pastor gave to him and his 
"dear wife" the hand of Church fellowship. 
The completed house drew in larger congrega- 
tions ; eminent men, among them Hon. Ira 
Harris, Senator from New York, became his 
hearers ; new interest appeared in the Sunday- 
school, and youth and children were converted 



GRAND-NIECE OF WASHINGTON. 



IOI 



and baptized. Sometimes notes like this ap- 
pear: "I never was with a church but I was 
charmed by their love for me ; and I never 
changed but from a sense of duty." Yet more, in 
each place of his pastorate, New York and Wash- 
ington, he had the practical wisdom to secure a 
home for his family, regarding this a first duty. 
In October, 1864, he had secured on good terms 
a neat and unpretending house, much like that 
he left in New York ; when he writes, " I am not 
mercenary in my notions, but need a home, 
that, enjoying its advantages, I may more use- 
fully serve Christ's cause." Among incidents of 
that higher mission this note is a specimen : 
" November 27, 1864, Washington. I never 
write that namejDut a thrill of patriotism goes 
through my heart. It impressed me to-day as 
it never did before. Elizabeth Washington, a 
member of my church, aged ninety-two years, is 
visible to my mind as I saw her yesterday, strong 
in faith, giving glory to God. She was a grand- 
niece of Gen. George Washington, a descendant 
of his brother Augustine. She died to-day, 
Lord's-day, at 3 P.M. Glorious transition from 
earth to the great and good above." 



102 MEMORIAL. 

Many public duties outside of his church rela- 
tions fell with the mantle of his predecessor 
upon him. One of the most memorable and 
trying of these was his service as spiritual ad- 
viser to the would-be assassin of Secretary Sew- 
ard, on the memorable night in April, 1865, 
when, of the several high officers of the Govern- 
ment selected for the same fate, President Lin- 
coln alone became the victim of the chief 
conspirator. When called, after his trial and 
condemnation, to visit the youth who had with 
almost superhuman daring entered the house of 
Secretary Seward, passed all his attendants, 
mounted the stairs to his bed-chamber, struck 
aside his nurse, and been foiled in his persistent 
effort to sever the jugular artery only by the steel 
garniture which had been made to keep in place 
the broken jaw of the Secretary, fractured in a 
recent accident, and who had, after all this, 
passed coolly and successfully out, striking aside 
every opposer, and deliberately mounted his 
horse, which he had left at the door — this mere 
youth Dr. Gillette found to be the son of a 
Baptist minister, ingenuous and sincere, in 



VISITS TO SEWARD'S ASSASSIN. 103 

early life a professed Christian. Such had 
proved the serpent fascination of the chief con- 
spirator, that he had been made to believe ihat 
the private assassination of the one whom he re- 
garded the chief violator of the rights of his 
country, was as honorable and as much a duty 
as to shoot an enemy in battle. Not till he had 
taken his seat in the saddle, after his daring at- 
tempt, did the character of his act as a crime 
break on him. He resolved at once that he 
ought not, as he had proposed, to ride past the 
lines of the city and escape. He returned his 
horse to its stable; he repaired to his boarding- 
house ; he awaited arrest ; he offered no defence 
on his trial ; he met his fate as a penitent for his 
crime against God and man ; but death to him 
was that of many who fell in the same cause on 
the battle-field, except that they were never 
conscious of wrong, while he was the penitent 
on the cross, looking to Him who had suffered 
even for those like him misguided. The faith- 
ful following up of this sad yet grateful duty 
wore upon Dr. Gillette's nervous sensibilities, 
as he often said, more than months of ordinary 



104 MEMORIAL. 

pastoral duty. In his journal he speaks of 
spending the night with him ; of accompanying 
him at the gallows, when he and others, " one 
a woman," met their fate; and he says, " The vis- 
ion haunted me for nights ! It was horrible ! " 
And yet this was but a specimen of the wearing 
to which Washington pastors are subjected. 
For, a city where a majority of the population are 
either directly or indirectly dependent on Gov- 
ernment employ, where appointments are sub- 
ject to political influence, and ten or more appli- 
cants for every position are waiting and anxious, 
with exhausted pecuniary resources and heart- 
sick with delay and disappointed hope, and 
where the sympathy and friendly interposition 
of an esteemed Christian minister is every day 
and by conflicting applicants invoked, the ordi- 
nary duties of official station, alike of heads of 
Departments and of Christian ministers, is not 
half the burden of constant care. Alive to all 
these sympathies to an unusual degree, called 
to meet both classes, the needy of both sections 
as well as of many localities, Dr. Gillette, at the 
close of the war in 1865, found his second year's 



POLITICS IN RELIGION. 105 

pastorate, though the most blessed, yet the 
most trying ; for " trials are blessings in dis- 
guise." 

It was an equally trying duty to meet consist- 
ently yet lovingly his brethren in new associa- 
tional relations. His whole soul rose against 
the introduction in any religious gathering of 
any allusion that could be regarded as betraying 
sectional animosity. Thus in his journal of the 
Lord's-day after President Lincoln's second in- 
auguration, in recording the report of the 
youths' missionary meeting, at which Hon. Ira 
Harris presided and a Western Congressman 
spoke, he writes : " I am not for mixing^politics 
and religion. I forbid the bans ; and God does." 
But when President Lincoln, five weeks after, 
was assassinated he was foremost to invite at his 
lecture-room the clergymen of the city to join in 
denouncing the crime. 

Unlike all the other Baptist churches of 
Washington, the others being connected with 
the Maryland Union Baptist Association, the 
First church was connected with the Potomac 
Association in Virginia. During all the years 



106 MEMORIAL. 

of the war that affiliation had not been broken ; 
when the war closed, renewed fraternal inter- 
change was required. To one accustomed to 
the double association maintained with both the 
Southern and the National Societies from the 
era of their separation in 1845, that twofold in- 
tercourse was comparatively easy, and it had its 
reliefs such as Christ himself certainly designed 
in His own framing of man's elastic nature, now 
oppressed with care and now excited even to 
merriment. Dr. William R. Williams, in his 
Madison Avenue lecture on " The Church in its 
Relation to the State," delivered in New York 
shortly after the war, pictures the scene when 
the two opposing political, parties, the State^ 
Rights or Herodian, and the National or Rom- 
an-Imperial, pooled their differences in their 
effort to draw forth some treasonable remark 
from Jesus in response to their question, " Is it 
lawful to pay tribute to Caesar or no ? " — a ques- 
tion apparently embarrassing in view of what 
Jesus had said to Peter when that apostle was 
asked whether his Master paid tribute to the 
Roman governor. The admirable adroitness of 



HUMOR IN RELIGION. 107 

Jesus, and the smile of actual humor that must 
have played on the faces of the common people, 
who heard Jesus gladly, is depicted when Christ 
called for a Roman denarius, and, holding it 
up, asked, " Whose image and superscription 
hath it ? " — all the crowd instinctively seeing how 
the crafty political aspirants were caught in the 
trap they had set for the people's favorite. So, 
when in June, 1865, the Virginia Anniversaries 
were held at Richmond, and the fabulous sums 
collected and expended were read, and the enor- 
mous balances in the treasury were reported " all 
in Confederate funds," the painful memories of 
'depreciated and now worthless securities could 
not keep down the smile that wreathed with 
circles, constantly broadening and widening, the 
features of those consecrated servants of Christ, 
only disappointed in their political expectations. 
More trying still, yet met with an .air of manly 
fortitude, was the reference to a committee 
of the provision four years before inserted in 
the constitution, which now required that the 
word " Confederate " be again changed to the 
" United States." When now, in the autumn of 



108 MEMORIAL. 

that same year, the Potomac Association met, 
whose sessions since 1861 had been prevented 
because its territory had been the constant seat 
of war, and when the proposition to amend its 
constitution by inserting the word " Confeder- 
ate " for " United," laid over for a year under 
rule and now after four years' delay first come up 
for action — when this proposed amendment 
was read by the clerk as a neiv question, the al- 
ternating expressions which flitted across the 
countenances of those truly noble, loyal, patriot- 
ic, and Christian men, if a painter could have 
caught and copied them, would have formed a 
masterpiece of art. Dr. Gillette and his Wash-" 
ington associates sat as peers among their Vir- 
ginia brethren, weeping with those that wept, 
yet smiling with all when the alternating swing 
of the pendulum came ; for " man is a pendulum 
between smiles and tears." It was a scene that 
angels smiled upon even more benignly than 
true men ; for it was witness how Christ rules in 
the hearts of His people. Such exhibitions at the 
close of the war showed why during the four 
years of war, whose result was to give freedom 



NUMEROUS PUBLIC DUTIES. IO9 

to four millions of blacks, one-tenth of whose 
number and one-fourth of whose mature men 
were members of Baptist churches, not an in- 
stance of insurrection occurred ; while, too, at 
its close not a man occupying official station, 
from the president of the Confederate States 
down, was ever tried for treason. Among his 
brethren met in the Potomac Association, Dr. 
Gillette was not only a brother among his breth- 
ren, but a prince among his peers ; so noble was 
his bearing and so sincerely was his leadership 
sought in their devotions and their counsels. 

Not only new duties as a citizen were thus to 
be met, but all his old associations with the so- 
cieties organized for Mission, Bible, and Publi- 
cation work, which had won his life-long interest, 
continued to be his care. Wherever the anniver- 
saries he was present ; and he alludes to presiding 
and speaking on many occasions in Philadelphia, 
New York, and elsewhere. When St. Louis 
was for prudential reasons selected, he was there ; 
and he dwells with interest on crossing for the 
first time in his life the " Father of Waters." 
Even marriages and funerals took him often to 



IIO MEMORIAL. 

the fields of his two former pastorates. Many 
city demands also were pressed on him. At one 
time he speaks of occupying for a time the place 
of Rev. Dr. Gray, chaplain of the Senate, absent 
through illness or necessary occupation. Above 
all and most taxing of all, as in Philadelphia and 
New York, so in Washington, every organization 
for the promotion of charity enlisted his large 
heart. The Young Men's Christian Association, 
the Evangelical Alliance, made their demands. 
The Columbian College, in which after the war 
his con Daniel became a student, had a large 
place in his sympathies ; for the former pastor 
of Sansom Street church, Dr. Staughton, had 
been its first president ; up to 1827 it had been 
directly associated, through the labors of Luther 
Rice, with Foreign Missions ; and for many 
years before coming to Washington, Dr. Gillette 
had been one of its trustees. Most taxing of 
all was his relation to the Columbia Hospital 
for Women ; which was organized in his study ; 
of whose Board he became the president ; for 
whose interests he devoted many days until Con- 
gress came to appreciate and aid his effort ; and to 



CLOSING PASTORAL BURDENS. 



Ill 



whose inmates as chaplain he gave his services on 
Sunday afternoon as well as on- other occasions. 
The first gathering to organize instruction of 
colored youth for the ministry at the close of the 
war was in conjunction with his predecessor at 
the lecture-room of the First Baptist church. 

Dr. Gillette's pastorate of five years' toil amid 
trial, came to an abrupt close. Often during 
the five years of his pastorate he had written in 
his private journal of wear on his physical -ener- 
gies. Thus on Lord's-day November 6, 1864, 
he mentions baptizing after sermon " Lingam B. 
Allen, of Norfolk, a student of Columbian Col- 
lege"; in the afternoon of officiating at the funer- 
al of Mr. Grover, proprietor of Grover's Theatre; 
then of attending the Youths' Mission Society 
meeting, " addressed by Thomas S. Samson," 
by himself and by others ; then of baptizing after 
the evening sermon, " a surgeon in the army, and 
two young ladies"; and he adds this sadly plain- 
tive note : " I am greatly fatigued. But, O, it is 
sweet to grow tired in trying to persuade my 
erring fellow-men, immortals, to a better life ; 
to enter a course which fits them for, and contin- 



112 MEMORIAL. 

ues them in, enjoyments which only a hope in 
Jesus can secure.'' Again June 1 1, 1865, he 
writes : " I preached twice, with other services ; 
but I suffered intensely from my old trouble. I 

have something in common with Robert Hall 

He knows what we need to keep us sensible of 
our. frailty and mortality. May I aspire after im- 
mortality." In the summer of 1868, his notes 
of weariness and his efforts to diminish his 
labors are frequent. July 10, 1868, he writes: 
" Intensely hot ; a blazing sun. A funeral Fri- 
day, not much study and a poor preparation for 
my work. Yet I preached three times, twenty 
minutes each." On the 27th of July he refers 
to this again ; and says, " I have been ill ever 
since, but am better now, yet weak. The good 
Lord has use for me ; and as long as He has, will 
keep me alive." On another Sunday he writes : 
" Four services to-day ; two too many." Tues- 
day, Aug. 4th, at the Potomac Association he 
says : " Declined preaching in the grove ; too 
feeble ; but made two addresses." After an 
effort at rest in a brief trip to New York and 
Philadelphia, he writes: " Lord's-day, October 



FIRST PARALYTIC SHOCK. 113 

nth. Preached to my people, A.M.; at dedica- 
tion of Georgetown Baptist church, P.M.; to my 
people again at eve. Wearied in mind and body 
I expect to work until I die. May the Lord 
Jesus work with me with signs following." 
Next day, Monday eve, he preached and bap- 
tized at Georgetown. 

This work, necessary but over-wearing, reached 
its climax. He had finished an earnest discourse 
and a fervent prayer on the morning of Sunday, 
January I, 1869 ; when, in feeling for his list of 
notices, he was seen to be losing consciousness. 
Two of his deacons hastened to the platform 
and assisted him to a chair, where he seemed 
sufficiently revived to be left thus seated. His 
predecessor in the pastorate was present and 
concluded the service ; assuming again for some 
months the charge of pastoral work ; until its 
present pastor, Rev. J. H. Cuthbert, was called 
from Augusta, Ga., and became its esteemed 
leader. 

The melancholy, pleasing record of this last 
event in his Washington pastorate appears in a 
note made that day, January 1, 1869; after 



114 



MEMORIAL. 



which his journal is blank up to November, 1870. 
On that evening he wrote : " I can only re- 
cord the incoming of a solemn New Year ; and 
I an invalid, my poor head, or intellect, unfitted 
for mental effort. How long! O Lord, how 
long ! Perhaps disabled for the rest of time's 
travel, and only a waif on its tide. The will of the 
Lord be done ! I was struck in the pulpit and 
fell in front of my Communion Table. Carried 
home, not knowing what was my condition." 
It is not until a year and eight months later that 
he recalls and more intelligently describes the 
events of the day. During the five years of his 
Washington pastorate, 121 members were added 
to the church : 71 by letter, 43 by baptism, and 
7 by experience. His pastorship w r as resigned 
April 14, 1869. 

The echo of inspired sayings, as Jesus him- 
self taught, is heard through all ages and finds 
its response in every heart that has once been 
truly consecrated to Christ's cause. The inquir- 
ing prayer of Saul of Tarsus, " Lord, what wilt 
Thou have me do ? " is the life-long guide .of 
every true servant of the Divine Master. It 



"DO IT WITH THY MIGHT. 1 1 5 

heeds and follows the wisdom of Solomon : 
" Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with 
thy might ! " It catches in childhood the spirit 
that spoke in the boy Jesus : " Wist ye not that I 
must be about my Father's business?" and 
while earthly sustenance and rest are felt to be 
needed, it forgets all these when meeting a sin- 
gle fallen one that may be redeemed ; for it ex- 
claims, " My meat is to do the will of him that 
sent me and to finish his work." Hence when 
toil and sacrifice are ended, it can humbly yet 
truthfully say : " I have glorified Thee on the 
earth : I have finished the work Thou gavest me 
to do." 



VIII. 

GENERAL INTERESTS. 

The life-work Dr. Gillette had chosen, was to 
him the most delightful of callings. Outside 
of and beyond its spiritual mission and purpose, 
he had sounded the depths, scaled the heights, 
and encompassed in his heart the physical and 
moral effect upon society of active Christian 
labor. Always less of a theologian than a 
human'tarian, quite as much of the working 
time of his life as his church demanded he gave 
with equal devotion to other enterprises which, 
if they form no part of specific pastoral duty, 
nevertheless move side and side with the spirit 
of Christ. 

He was always at work; unfortunately 
without severe system, albeit with great 
thoroughness. Whatever call came, found him 
ever on the alert and ready. Only the night 

(116) 



SYMPATHIES OUTSIDE HIS CHURCH. WJ 

seemed to belong to him ; and only his family 
knew how, when the world had lain aside its 
burdens, his study lamp shone o'er his bowed 
head long after nature had warned him to slum- 
ber. 

We have seen that during his brief pastorate 
in Schenectady, his sympathies extended clear 
beyond the circle of his immediate charge. 
" How new fields were explored ; the old stand- 
ard planted till places that had known no Chris- 
tian society grew to have churches ; and the 
rude smithy, from the door of which he spoke* 
the glad tidings, expanded into a temple to the 
Most High. 

The same outreaching zeal he carried to his 
church in Philadelphia. He was no unheralded 
stranger there. The months of labor among 
the denominations of that city — where he went 
to solicit aid for his people in Schenectady — 
had introduced him to almost every evangelical 
society in that staid and solemn town ; while 
the hospitable doors that had opened to him, 
had let his genial personality into the hearts of 
very many men of wide secular influence, whose 



118 MEMORIAL. 

public influence made further demands upon his 
time. 

The sixteen years he spent in Philadelphia 
were full of development in educational and re- 
ligious privileges. 

In the churches of the colored people he 
began an immediate interest, preaching to them 
whenever he could find occasion ; urging their 
pastors to study themselves, and to insist upon 
preparatory study in such of their young men 
as contemplated entering the ministry. As a 
means to that end he aided greatly in organiz- 
ing night schools in their meeting-houses, teach- 
ing in them himself, and from their pulpits 
called on them to prepare themselves for citi- 
zenship by such advantages as these schools 
afforded. 

In hospitals and benevolent institutions of all 
kinds he was a frequent visitor, giving to and 
begging for the needy. So closely did the care 
of the sick lie to his heart that he endured not 
a little ridicule for his earnest personal efforts 
and outspoken encouragement of what was at 
that time an alarming heresy — the Medical Col- 



PHILADELPHIA PRISONS AND HOSPITALS. I 1 9 

lege for Women — which has since grown beyond 
the need of praise. 

At Moyamensing prison and the Houses of 
Refuge he often preached, and visited at other 
times, suggesting helpful privileges for convicts, 
such as books and amusements looking to their 
awakening interest in the better walks of society ; 
and there was scarcely another question of pub- 
lic concern during his residence in Philadelphia 
that does not somewhere record his name in the 
lists of its promoters. 

Local politics in Philadelphia prior to, and 
for years after Dr. Gillette took up his residence 
there seemed to involve but one issue, to resist 
the encroachments of the Roman Church and 
the efforts of the Papal Bishops to interfere 
with the public-school system. Into these con- 
tests Dr. Gillette rushed with an ardor worthy 
of his ancestry. In 1844 the question had as- 
sumed such proportions that public meetings 
were convened in Independence Square to pro- 
test against the proposition to suspend the 
reading of the Scriptures in the public schools. 
The proposal appeared in the form of an open 



120 MEMORIAL, 

letter from Bishop Kendrick of the diocese of 
Philadelphia, calling upon the "Faithful" to 
suppress such readings of the Bible as perni- 
cious, and claiming that " the word "" uninter- 
preted by the Church was incomplete and tend- 
ed to irreverence," and holding in justification 
of such interference with the practice then in 
vogue at the schools, that there was nothing 
either in the Constitution or the laws of this 
country that anywhere recognized the Bible, 
much less any particular sect founded upon its 
teachings. 

The public mind was inflamed ; and on the 
nth of March, 1844, Independence Square was 
thronged with an excited multitude called to 
hear the cause of the people against the Church. 

To this meeting, Dr. Gillette, who throughout 
the discussion in the public journals and in less 
prominent gatherings had uttered the boldest 
sentiments, was called as a speaker. 

Anonymous letters threatened, and anxious 
friends warned him of his danger. Threats and 
entreaties alike only served to confirm the con- 
viction that the enemies of Protestant Christian- 



PAPACY AND THE COMMON SCHOOLS. 121 

ity in Protestant America, who had for years 
been plotting and in ambush, had at last ad- 
vanced into the open field where there was a 
chance to meet them eye to eye and blade to 
blade. 

Those of his brethren who remember so pleas- 
antly and testify so tenderly to the gentle spirit 
whose voice in Church councils was ever plead- 
ing for harmony, would hardly recognize in the 
fiery orator of that day their genial friend ; for 
if ever a voice called to revolution, his did. His 
words were not well weighed perhaps, but they 
were born of the occasion and fitted it. As one 
reads the address to-day, one may smile, but 
does not forget that the speaker was nearly 
half a century nearer the times when the Vat- 
ican was something more than a tale that is told. 
Of Bishop Kendrick he exclaimed : 
"Thank heaven, he is not bishop of me! Is 
he of you, my countiymen ? No ! No ! you 
well say, ' No ' ! He has disturbed the Eagle in 
her nest as she broods her young liberty Eag- 
lets. She will tear every shred of his tinselled 
trappings to atoms and his tiara from his pate, 



122 MEMORIAL. 

e'er she relinquishes the least morsel of the 
heavenly food she has provided for her young. 
" I have been advised not to appear in this 
Square to-day. My friends have feared for my 
person, my life, saying, let it be a question be- 
tween the people and the Jesuits. So it is. So 
it will remain. I came here in compliance with 
the- request of the gentlemen who arranged this 
meeting. I am a Baptist clergyman, a denom- 
ination to whom and of whom Washington ut- 
tered memorable words commemorative of their 
unfaltering devotion to the principles of the 
Revolution, and I have the honor to be grand- 
son to two men, one a clergyman, who perilled 
all in the cause of American liberty ; but I came 
as one of the people ; and who, because I am a 
clergyman, shall deter me from using means 
whereby my country shall be blessed, and the 
curse of alien intrusion rolled off her bosom ! 
I have a stake in society. I love my race, my 
country, my children. If to keep the Bible 
where they may have access to its holy teach- 
ings, need should be, I will resist ' unto blood, 
striving against sin.' I make no reserve ; I 



CATHOLIC APPRECIATION OF HIS COURSE. 123 

pledge all in a war so glorious as that which 
preserves an open Bible in the schools of my 
country. Yes ! if to do so I must yield my life 
to the sword, my life is ready for the sacrifice." 
In concluding his harangue, Dr. Gillette calls 
on the Papacy to reform, give o'er its follies and 
cease the attempt to mould liberty after Rom- 
an models. If nothing moves it — 

" Its votaries will then appear 
Idiot-like gazing in the brook, 
Leaping at stars, fastening in the mud, 
At glory grasping, but in infamy to sink." 

If Dr. Gillette's friends were in dread as to 
what he might say, they were now thoroughly 
alarmed at what he had said, of a tithe of which 
they had not deemed him capable. They sur- 
rounded him as a guard and spirited him out of 
a crowd where violence 'had been loudly threat- 
ened, to the house of a friend, and singularly 
enough a Catholic friend, but an American, 
where he spent the night in safety. 

It required the shedding of blood later on, 
before the questions of that hour were suffered 
to rest ; and in the streets of Philadelphia the 



124 MEMORIAL. 

orator of that day faced unharmed the missiles 
of the " No Bible Party." 

Such prominence introduced him to a wide 
range of people utterly apart from sectarian 
circles. He was in demand for lectures, meet- 
ings of public import, assemblies, conventions, 
dedications, receptions of distinguished visitors, 
even for political coteries, which in those days 
clustered about certain individuals whose homes 
were then the " Halls " where public men and 
measures were discussed. 

In 1835, after a residence of a few months in 
Philadelphia, he had fulfilled the promise of 
his heart by marrying Hannah, the eldest daugh- 
ter of his friend James Jenkins, Esq., of New 
York, at whose house he had been entertained 
on the occasion of his first visit to the me- 
tropolis. 

About the home over which she presided 
clustered a varied company of friends, social at 
all times, but belonging to many walks and di- 
verse creeds. 

The writer has witnessed the sombre wedding 
of a solemn colored couple in the kitchen while 



HOME OF JUDSON AND MISSIONARIES. 125 

the parlors were thronged with such people as 
Philadelphia remembers with pride. 

It was the home to which the great Judson 
came as comes a brother, and where he met and 
wooed his wife, Emily Chubbuck, (Fanny For- 
rester) ; where such missionaries as Dean and 
Abbot, and the Karen and Japanese converts, 
knew the welcome they could not doubt. 

Bluff old General Reily left his son under 
that roof-tree while he led his division through 
the Mexican war, and beneath its shelter young 
students for the ministry destitute of means 
lived without a care. Again a Polish exile and 
his family picked out of the dregs of misery 
and misfortune shared its comforts ; and it has 
happened that strangers seeking merely a night's 
rest have died there, without a grave and un- 
cofrmed but for the master of that humble 
house. And when we read the modest record 
of these days and see between the lines the 
funerals, the visits to the sick, the weddings, 
and the countless calls of lesser moment, we 
wonder also to read that the church grew apace 
and members were added to the fold. During 



126 MEMORIAL. 

these years he received calls to other churches, 
and especially the honor of two invitations to 
become chaplain of the University of Virginia, 
a distinction which he felt it his duty to decline. 

To New York he came in 1852, unknown to 
very many of the people, although not a stranger 
to their pastors. The church then worshipping 
in Hope Chapel, at his suggestion and mostly 
with his assistance moved into a new edifice on 
West 23d Street, where he again took up the 
thread of social and public life, to repeat the 
history of Philadelphia. 

Every interest with which he had identified 
himself in Philadelphia was duplicated in New 
York in some form, especially the care of the 
colored churches, with whose people he quickly 
established himself, employing his usual methods 
of help and instruction. 

Probably his chiefest solicitude went out 
toward the Young Men's Christian Associ- 
ation, then merely a suggestion of its present 
power; and perhaps is due to him as much as 
to any other the coherence of that benevolence 
when it struggled for life and was about to fall 



RESCUE OF THE N. Y. Y. M. C. ASSOC'N. 12J 

apart. The Hon. Cephas Brainerd, writing of 
Dr. Gillette's work for the Association, says : 

" Out of an unfortunate difference relating 
to the management of the affairs of the Associa- 
tion, a controversy arose which attracted great 
public attention and resulted finally — in the 
then heated state of the public mind on po- 
litical questions — in somewhat extensive belief 
that the Association was engaged in the discus- 
sion of the slavery question ; a belief quite un- 
founded in general fact, though there were two 
or three speeches on that topic. As one conse- 
quence something like one hundred and seventy- 
five gentlemen withdrew in a body from the 
organization. 

" The controversy and debate ended early in 
the spring of 1857, just about the time when 
preparations were to be made for the May anni- 
versary. One of the gentlemen, prominent as 
a leader among those that withdrew, announced 
on the floor of the Association as he bade it 
farewell, that no preparation had been made for 
the anniversary, and that in his opinion it would 
be impossible to find a church in the city where 



128 MEMORIAL. 

an anniversary could be held. A committee was 
appointed, however, to make what arrangements 
were possible, and Dr. Gillette was applied to 
for the use of his church. He understood the 
controversy which had disturbed the Associa- 
tion. He was willing to pardon something of 
heat and excitement in young men ; he had 
faith in their desire to do right and to be right. 
He cordially co-operated with those who re- 
mained in the Association in their efforts to 
arrange for this their most important meeting, 
and the result was that the anniversary was held 
in Calvary Baptist church, Dr. Gillette taking 
the lead in arranging for it. The church was 
crowded on the occasion. Dr. Webster, presi- 
dent of the Free Academy, presided. President 
Sturtevant, of Illinois College, Rev. Dr. Edwin 
F. Hatfield, Rev. Dr. R. M. Hatfield, and the 
Rev. Dr. Theodore Cuyler, taking active part 
in the exercises ; and only those familiar with 
the situation of affairs at the time can truly ap- 
preciate the value of the contribution thus made 
to the cause of the Association. 

" Years afterward, however, Dr. Gillette made 



SAVED BY HIM DURING THE WAR. 1 29 

a contribution of much greater value. This was 
in 1863, the period of greatest depression dur- 
ing the Civil war. Many young men were in 
the army. Great calls were made for the use of 
money in that direction. The membership of 
the Association was greatly diminished. It had 
become deeply involved in debt, and arrange- 
ments had been made, and publicly stated, for 
winding up the affairs of the Association and 
transferring its small personal property to some 
of its early friends who had abandoned its 
active service, and who were willing to become 
its executors and pay the debt. 

"A meeting was called in the rooms of the 
Association to vote upon that scheme. Dr. 
Gillette, who had always continued a member of 
the Association, was the only clergyman pres- 
ent. After the plans had been presented and 
the young men had expressed their views, Dr. 
Gillette, who had occupied a seat in the most 
distant corner of the room, addressed the little 
meeting. He expressed his great confidence in 
the purpose of the Association ; his appreciation 
of the work it had accomplished ; his belief in 
9 



130 MEMORIAL. 

its future and in the existence of a great need 
for such an organization ; he opposed the propo- 
sition to disband, and proposed himself to take 
part in a movement for the payment of its debt 
and the rearrangement of its finances. The vote 
on the motion to disband was lost probably by 
reason of that promise, and nobly was it redeem- 
ed. Dr. Gillette stands in my memory and judg- 
ment with the four or five men to whom New 
York is really indebted for the Young Men's 
Christian Association as it exists to-day." 

The present secretary of the Association 
speaks of the same time ; how when the Society 
was in arrears for rent and likely to be called upon 
to vacate its premises, Dr. Gillette appealed to 
them most feelingly, begging that the Associa- 
tion might continue to exist and offering the 
basement of his church for their home until for- 
tune should again favor them. 

He interested the clergymen of the city in 
their behalf till the various pastors met in con- 
vention at the Fifth Avenue hotel, and subse- 
quently from their pulpits solicited the aid 
which placed the Association beyond want. 



HOSPITAL SERVICE IN THE WAR. 13I 

It is not easy to estimate the deeds of to-day ; 
but one knows how easy it is to forget the 
sources of • greatness and power ; oaks from 
acorns, and forests of oaks born of the germ 
planted by a hand that was never lifted to ask 
for recognition. 

The breaking out of the Civil war awakened 
in Dr. Gillette a wonderful spirit of patriotic 
labor. At numerous meetings his voice was 
heard in encouragement and hope. His Church 
was opened immediately for the reception and 
distribution of hospital stores. Thirty of the 
young men of his church joined regiments and 
marched away each with his benediction ; and, 
when his own four sons one after another en- 
tered the ranks of the army, they did so with 
never a murmur of dissent from him. 

During all these bloody years he was a con- 
stant visitor to the hospitals for the wounded, 
and became active in the work of the Christian 
Commission in its ministrations to the sick and 
disabled. His journal records how during the 
riots of 1863 in New York, he was stoned, in- 
sulted, and abused on his merciful errands to 



132 MEMORIAL. 

Bellevue Hospital, and how with a pistol at his 
breast his money was demanded by the thieves 
whose carnival it was. But of men he had no 
fear at any time or under any circumstances ; 
and it would startle some of those who knew 
and loved the sweetness of his nature to learn 
of encounters of which the writer was a witness, 
where righteous indignation took a more em- 
phatic form than mild rebuke. In the riots in 
Philadelphia, as on the field of Bull Run, where 
he barely escaped capture while seeking tidings 
of his eldest son, who was reported missing ; so 
again among the wounded in the battle with 
Early around Washington, he moved, if not un- 
conscious of, yet seemingly indifferent to, dan- 
ger. There was nothing aggressive, burly, or 
pugnacious in his disposition ; but what might 
under certain provocation seem so, was but the 
manliness born of his honest intent and purposes. 
With aggregate sin he had only a Christian's 
quarrel. It saddened but never angered him. 
But with uncleanness, depravity, and crime, he 
believed in instant suppression by the handiest, 
the speediest, and most vigorous means. 



A PEACE-MAKER AT WASHINGTON. 133 

At Washington,, whither he removed in 1864, 
he was presented to a much wider arena for the 
exercise of his humanitarian impulses. 

His church there was one of great political 
differences. Many of its members were out- 
spoken sympathizers with the Confederate 
cause, as they were mingled by many ties of 
blood and family with Southern society. For- 
tunately their adverse opinions had not broken 
out into open discord, but it was reserved for 
Dr. Gillette, while there could be no doubt as 
to his position on the National question, to turn 
the thoughts of his people toward their simple 
Christian duty, utterly ignoring whatever social 
or political gulfs might stretch between individ- 
uals or families. Over these slumbering but 
wakeful discords he threw the mantle of his 
own great charity. To friend and foe he had 
the same greeting of heart and hand, and to 
every house he carried the graces of a spirit that 
apparently knew the one bond of perfect brother- 
hood, and that only. Here he grew into the 
service of the Nation. The Baptist mothers all 
over the country whose sons were in disgrace, 



134 MEMORIAL. 

under sentence of death, or in need of help, 
applied to Dr. Gillette, until his face grew 
familiar at the White House and at the sev- 
eral departments of the Government. There 
are men living to-day whose lives he begged at 
the door of the Executive. Of Mr. Lincoln he 
used to say he never asked in vain ; and even 
the great War Secretary, hard and unyielding as 
he seemed to many others, always heard him 
speedily and patiently. He delighted to re- 
count how Mr. Lincoln, after hearing his 
plea for the life of a deserter sentenced to death, 
hesitated long, urging his own duty to the strug- 
gling army dying so faithfully and devotedly. 
" Yes ! Mr. President, but this is scarcely more 
than a child, and the only one left to his widow- 
ed mother." 

" Is that so, Doctor? Well, then let the poor 
fellow live." And hastily indorsing a commu- 
tation of the death penalty, he handed it to the 
Doctor and bade him take it to the Secretary of 
War. 

As in New York, so in Washington he 
resumed his voluntary labors in the soldiers' 



NIGHT WITH SEC. SE WARD'S ASSASSIN. 13$ 

hospitals, and many a long night when nurses 
were wanting he held vigils with the groaning 
men, to many of whom he gave of the water of 
which if a man drink he shall never thirst. 
But the saddest duty in all that sad time came 
when the greatest friend the republic ever had 
fell by the assassin's hand. 

Payne, the attempted murderer of Mr. Sew- 
ard, after his sentence sent for him to be with 
him during the remaining hours of his life. It 
was an awful duty, made more terrible by the 
fact that Payne was the son of a Baptist clergy- 
man. He was with him in his cell the entire" 
night before the execution, and stood with him 
on the scaffold and saw the four wretches sent 
into the life beyond, with all their horrible writh- 
ings and sickening gasps. No scene in all that 
dreadful war equalled that. For days he was 
bowed in sorrow. He would lie upon the sofa 
for hours, shading his eyes with his hand as if 
to shut out the vision of death. At times he 
would murmur, " Horrible ! " " Horrible ! " and 
start away as if to divert his thoughts from the 
dreadful theme ; and until a year or two before 



136 MEMORIAL. . v •;.;; 

his own change came, he was wont to say that 
the hours he spent with the four conspirators 
did more to break him down than all his years 
of service. 

The war ended, and the problem of the freed- 
man became the most important to all classes 
of the people. Into its solution he threw the 
whole force of his experience and influence, 
working side and side with his friend Gen. How- 
ard in the establishment of schools for these peo- 
ple ; whose race, both in Philadelphia and New 
York, had claimed his anxious and helpful care. 
He acted for a time as chaplain of the Senate, 
also of the Government Asylum, also as a mem- 
ber of the Board of Trustees of Columbian Col- 
lege to which he had been elected. 

But perhaps the largest monument to his 
memory now exists in the Columbian Hospital 
for Women at Washington, of which he was the 
first president, and which had its origin with his 
friends, Dr. Thompson, Rev. Dr. Hall, and him- 
self. For this charity he begged of friends and 
of Congress ; and what began with a few beds, 
one nurse, and Dr. Thompson as medical direc- 



COLUMBIAN HOSPITAL FOR WOMEN. I 37 

tor, now has no superior among the merciful 
institutions of America. 

With his interest in this benign charity ended 
the really hard work of his life. . The decade 
and more of years that followed, flowed along 
in the same channels, but with deeper and less 
hurrying currents. It was the flow of the river 
as it nears the sea, where it merges and is lost 
forever. 

It began among the freshening dews on the 
grasses of the Jackson hills, and widened ever 
onward to its close. It gladdened many an hum- 
ble cottage along its bourns and blessed the 
mighty cities as it passed. What commerce it 
bore of hopes new-born, hearts upraised, hu- 
manity ennobled, and souls saved, God knows 
and will remember. 



IX. 

CLOSING SCENES. - 

It had been Dr. Gillette's conviction — and 
perhaps in a certain sense his desire — that he 
might die in his pulpit. It was in his pulpit 
that the hand of the Master first beckoned him. 

From his church one Sabbath morning in 
the early winter of 1869 he was borne to his 
home with a nameless confusion of mind, which, 
while it did not prostrate, nevertheless dazed 
and stunned him. 

With no apparent departure from his usual 
forms, he had conducted the entire service of 
the morning, with the addition of the rite at- 
tending the admission of new members into the 
church ; but with a flushed face and excited 
manner he recalled the people who were dis- 
persing, and attempted for the third time to 
announce the services for the coming week. 
(138) 



LAST CHURCH SERVICE AT WASHINGTON. 1 39 



Fortunately the Rev. Doctors Samson and Hill 
were present, and together concluded the com- 
munion services, while he sat in his accustomed 
place scarcely conscious of his surroundings. 

On arriving at home, he seated himself by the 
fire in the deepest dejection, looking strangely 
at his family, who were prudently endeavoring 
to seem unconscious that anything unusual had 
occurred. For a long time he sat silently, till, 
turning to his wife, he said, " Dear, what hap- 
pened to-day at the church ? " 

" Nothing; except you were perhaps not feel- 
ing quite well," she replied. 

" But something awful must have happened," 
he continued ; " for I remember nothing at all 
of what I did except to give the hand of fel- 
lowship." 

That evening he wrote in his diary a few fal- 
tering lines in wonder at his condition, and a 
yearning cry for light to see the beyond, yet 
with a faith unclouded and a resignation almost 
unearthly, when one considers what his situation 
meant to such a man. 

The following day he could neither read nor 



140 



MEMORIAL 



write without exquisite pain, and every effort to 
fix his thoughts upon any specific labor caused 
him to cry out in alarm. A few days of com- 
plete rest sufficiently restored him so as to 
relieve his head of pain ; but with his partially 
restored mental vigor came a full comprehen- 
sion of his condition. He found himself a man 
just past sixty, erect, and to all appearance with- 
out a bodily infirmity, after forty years of public 
life, suddenly, rudely silenced, when, to his zeal- 
ous soul, his mission seemed only half finished. 
The writer walked with him one night when he 
seemed most despondent, urging him with vain 
sophistry to consider, that whereas it is said of 
good men, " they rest from their labors and 
their works do follow them," it was permitted 
him to rest and to see the fruit of all his toil. 
Alas ! it was not of comfort he was thinking or 
for rewards he was grieving. He was alive, and 
there was work to do — the work of his life for 
which he would have given that life. He wept 
that in a world of worlds to conquer he was 
disarmed and a captive. He seemed actually 
ashamed that the message of great joy should 



YEAR OF RECRUIT IN EUROPE. 141 

die upon his lips, and that a herald of Christ 
should stand voiceless upon the walls of Zion. 
To realize it cost him untold sorrow. 

Under advice of his physician he gave up 
every interest and went abroad, his wife and 
daughter accompanying him. He had jour- 
neyed to Europe in 1857, and there became 
acquainted with many who, upon this second 
visit, gave him a hearty welcome. But the temp- 
tation to work and preach was steadfastly re- 
sisted. The only clerical office he performed 
was the marriage ceremony of his only daughter, 
Grace, to Mr. Norman W. Dodge, which he sol- 
emnized in the American chapel in Paris in 
July, 1869. 

From Paris he went direct to Belgium. At 
Baden he took the baths, and submitted to a 
systematic course of treatment and idleness. 
Thence to Lausanne, where recreation and 
pleasant companionship supplemented the skill 
of his physicians. His recovery was rapid, and 
from an invalid with trembling faculties and 
enfeebled limbs, new light and life shone in 
upon him, and a five-mile walk became pastime. 



142 MEMORIAL. 

Returning to Paris, he spent five weeks there, 
as his journal records, "sight-seeing and looking 
after the good of our Baptist mission, and 
preaching on several occasions." 

From Paris he went to London, where work 
again beset him. The Baptist pastors of Lon- 
don, who had learned to know him in many 
ways, gave him their pulpits. He writes : 
" Preached often at St. John's chapel (late Bap- 
tist Noel's), Bloomsbury, Dr. Brock's, and others; 
made four addresses to Mr. Spurgeon's students 
and people ; made many speeches on various in- 
teresting occasions, and was happy." " Happy," 
indeed, that there was yet something for him to 
do in the cause which to him touched the stars. 
None can know how happy, unless, like him, 
they have stared into the future and seen a 
vista of years still to be threaded, as one 
threads a labyrinth, life and love behind, and 
onward, deepening gloom and mystery. 

Work had begun again, but the warning 
voice of nature was well heard and well heeded. 
On his return to America in May, 1870, he con- 
tinued to recreate himself, visiting loved friends 



PASTOR IN FEEBLE CHURCHES. 



H3 



and scenes. In September of that year he as- 
sumed pastoral charge of. the Gethsemane Bap- 
tist church in Brooklyn — a small interest, but 
suited, as he says, to his condition of health. 
He considered that he could no longer hope to 
work among the foremost ; and nothing so 
clearly illustrates the hearty sincerity of his in- 
terest in life as the cheerfulness with which he 
accepted an humble service where he could hope 
for nothing save the joy that comes of congenial 
duty. 

He wrote no more sermons. Out of the full- 
ness of his wide experience he spoke, and out 
of the tenderness born of a long life of ever- 
ready sympathy he led his flock like a shep- 
herd. " This is the way ; come, walk ye in it " 
with me ; and even the little children under- 
stood him, for his Sunday-school grew, even 
though the church might stand still. So was 
it later on, when increasing strength seemed to 
warrant a larger field, and he removed to Sing 
Sing, where again the Spirit answered him in 
great encouragement. Both these charges he 
retained only long enough to be assured they 



144 



MEMORIAL. 



were ready to call and support a younger life 
than his ; when he moved along to another and 
his final charge at North New York, there to 
accomplish the last measure of his love for the 
souls of men. 

With every year added to him grew his affec- 
tion for the people of God, and never did love 
more potent dwell in the heart of man. He 
seemed to feel intuitively that this was his last 
labor. He took up his residence where he could 
look out upon the church, and though it was 
but a rude structure to the temples in which he 
had preached, yet he loved it as he never loved 
any other. As in every other church, the little 
children ran to him in groups to have him speak 
to them and call them by his endearing names ; 
and wherever there was a young life he knew 
the springs of its sweetest impulses and touched 
them with the hand of a master. Nothing in 
all his being, no attribute of manhood, no apti- 
tude of association, no tact with men, no power 
of mind could exceed the exhibition of his over- 
weening manner toward the young. All through 
his journal he speaks of his faith in thern — his 



DEATH OF HIS ONLY DAUGHTER. 145 

love for them. They are the " growing pillars 
of the Church "; and it was a touching sight to 
see the little tots in the streets leave their play, 
run to his side, and taking his hand walk de- 
murely along while he chatted with them in 
words scarcely older than their own. How 
tearfully his journal reads where he records : 
" To-day I buried a little child. What un- 
earthly beauty, and how close to heaven." 
His heart knew of its own deep knowledge ; for, 
his first-born, a daughter, died at the age of 
three years, and his last-born, a daughter grown 
to womanhood, whom he bade farewell in youth 
and health on Saturday, he saw again, on the 
Wednesday following, sleeping in everlasting 
silence. 

This blow came just after his return from 
Europe, and just as he had taken up his work 
again with new courage and cheerful hope. He 
was addressing a convention in the West when 
a telegram was put into his hands announcing 
that the child, about whom he had woven all 
the poetry of his being,. was dying. A weary 
night in the cars brought him crushed and 
10 



I46 MEMORIAL. 

broken to her coffin. Yet Heaven was kind, 
for standing there he saw and told us of a vision 
that stilled the storm forever in his heart, while 
heaven thenceforth had a sweeter meaning. 

Thanksgiving day, 1 881 — only a few months 
before he entered into his own rest — his heart 
again touched the depths of mortal sorrow. It 
was at the bedside of his eldest son, Colonel 
James Gillette, who lay dying. 

He had answered the first call of his country, 
and during almost every hour of the civil war — 
with the exception of five months spent in Libby 
prison — was ever in the field. It was for his 
wounded body the father had searched on the 
field of Bull Run, and through the terrors of 
twenty battles had waited to hear the worst. 

It was no ordinary affection, therefore, that 
seemed ending there on that day of thanks for 
God's goodness and mercy to men. Perhaps it 
was the solemn excitement of the scene ; per- 
haps the pity of the Great Master for the sad- 
ness* of His servant ; but the clouds lifted from 
his mind, and his speech came clear as crystal, 
as he took his boy's hand, kissed his brow, and 



LAST SPEECH FOR A. & F. BIB. SOC. 147 

spoke to him of the hope of heaven. He re- 
ceived one word of assurance, and turned away. 
It was a fitting close to the most loving part of 
his earthly mission that his last words of com- 
fort to the dying should fall into the soul of a 
son so dear. 

Peacefully and usefully his life moved along 
until the May meetings at Saratoga in 1880; 
when, at an evening session, Sunday, the 23d, he 
uttered his last words to the churches. It was 
on behalf of the American and Foreign Bible 
Society ; of which he had been a member for 
forty years and more. Speaking of the Society, 
he said : 

" I have known the history of this Society. 
I have known it, to bless God for it. I have 
known it to the increase of my love for the 
brethren with whom I have associated ; and I 
have a desire to see the world illuminated in 
the Gospel of God as it shines in the face of 
Jesus Christ His Son. What a treasure ! Bind 
it to your hearts. Let it swell your bosoms 
with gratitude to Him who gave you through 
it the knowledge of salvation. Give of that 



148 



MEMORIAL. 



Gospel, that others may be blessed as you have 
been blessed." 

Added to the somewhat exciting discussion, 
of which the words quoted formed a part, the 
day had been intensely warm, while the night 
which followed was sultry and enervating. The 
next morning he found himself unable to rise 
without assistance ;. although by a great effort 
of will he succeeded in getting down-stairs, and 
even later on in walking to the meetings, but 
very soon to return. Some friends found him 
seated on the veranda of the hotel, perfectly 
conscious of his situation, but quite helpless. 
In reply to anxious inquiries, he exclaimed, 
through his tears, " My hand has lost its cun- 
ning ! " 

He was removed to his country home at 
Lake George, where in a few weeks much of 
the lost power in his hand returned, and he 
could assist himself with apparent freedom. 
His mind remained clear, and all his faculties 
quite at his command, till one warm day he 
ventured on a long walk over a sandy way to 
the house of a neighbor whose little boy had 



LOSS OF MEMORY OF WORDS. 149 

been drowned in the lake the day previous, and 
at whose funeral he was to offer a prayer. This 
exertion developed another form of his malady 
(aphasia), and his speech became incoherent ; 
that in turn to be followed by attacks of epi- 
lepsy at gradually decreasing intervals. 

With the exception of his inability to express 
his thoughts in appropriate language, he had 
lost little of his power to form ideas or to com- 
prehend the happenings of the day ; but there 
was a sluggish recognition of the relevancy of 
words, so that only those accustomed to his 
modes of expression could understand him 
readily or communicate readily with him. 

Until his eyesight became sadly impaired, he 
read daily several hours and wrote occasional 
letters, but in the halting manner of his speech 
and with the same confusion of language, 
through which, however, his thoughts could be 
easily defined. On the Sabbath-day he defied 
the advice of friends or the threatenings of the 
weather, and insisted upon going to church 
somewhere to some service, from which he 
seemed always to derive great pleasure. 



150 MEMORIAL. 

Soon, however, his sight grew so defective 
that he became utterly dependent upon others 
for mental life. The events of the day he 
heard every morning ; walks, conversation, etc., 
beguiled the hours till evening ; when music or 
the reading of essays or religious news prepared 
him for the night. 

Naturally the helplessness of his condition 
induced at times great depression of spirits, 
always, however, to be succeeded by a degree 
of resignation, when he would express aloud 
his thanks to God that he was free from pain 
and ready to live or die, as God willed. 

The Sunday night just preceding the final 
attack which prostrated him, he joined heartily 
in a little service of song, and kissing his loved 
ones good-night, as was his invariable custom, 
he retired in cheerful mood. The following 
morning he was stricken, and went to his bed, 
never to rise from it. 

The month of his final illness was a succes- 
sion of partial recoveries and relapses, till on the 
morning of August 24, 1882, God was kind to 
him. No more delicious day ever dawned for 



THE TWILIGHT BEFORE LAST SLEEP. 151 

him. Death came amid the perfection of nature 
in the home where he had found his only un- 
disturbed rest in all the years. 

It was not a mighty mind or a great career 
that ended there, unless we measure mind by 
the sublimity of its purposes, and greatness by 
its toils and results. But fame to him was only 
another name for usefulness, and whatever of 
glory there was he gave to God, since it was 
won in His service. 

He died peacefully, restfully, painlessly, with- 
out a throe, a look, or a word. Death fell on 
him as twilight falls and deepens. The hand 
that for more than half a century had pointed 
mankind to the loftiest aims, slowly sought his 
side. It was the stilling of a heart that knew the 
hearts of men ; — the flight of a spirit that won 
love, and has flown where love is deathless. 



X. 

ABSTRACT OF FUNERAL DISCOURSE 

BY THE REV. DR. R. S. MacARTHUR. 

On Sunday morning, September 3, 1882, the 
pastor of the Calvary Baptist Church preached 
in his own pulpit the funeral sermon of his be- 
loved predecessor, Rev. A. D. Gillette, D.D. 
The text chosen is in Job v. 26: "Thou shalt 
come to thy grave in a full age, like as a shock 
of corn cometh in its season." It was pointed 
out in the sermon that Dr. Gillette was fully 
ripe (1) In the Godward tendencies of a pious 
ancestry. (2) He was ripe in the opportunities 
and experiences of a long life. (3) He was ripe 
in the results of an active life for God's glory 
and man's good ; and (4) in the gifts and graces 

of a symmetrical Christian character. The re- 
(152) 



HOPE CHAPEL, NOW CALVARY CHURCH. I 53 

marks which follow are abstracts of a part of 
the sermon, giving special prominence to his 
relations to the Calvary Church. 



Perhaps the most fruitful period of Dr. Gil- 
lette's fruitful life was his pastorate of nearly 
twelve years in the Calvary Church, New York. 
He was called to this field from Philadelphia, 
in 1852, and was at that time forty-five years of 
age ; he was thus in his meridian strength. He 
was ripe in culture and in experience ; he pos- 
sessed a spotless name, and a constantly widen- 
ing fame. 

The church was at this time worshipping in 
Hope Chapel, and was known as the Broadway 
Baptist Church. It was an offshoot of the Stan- 
ton Street Church — the mother of churches in 
this city. Rev. David Bellamy, pastor of the 
Stanton Street Church, went out from that 
church with a number of members, who on the 
evening of November 25, 1846, met to take meas- 
ures for organizing a congregation to be called 
the " Hope Chapel Congregation." The night 
was stormy; only ten persons were present. Two 



154 



MEMORIAL. 



evenings later another meeting was held ; Rev. 
David Bellamy, who had just resigned the pas- 
torate of the Stanton Street Church, was invited 
to preach to the new congregation in the Coli- 
seum, which had been secured. Shortly after, 
lots were bought on Broadway opposite the New 
York Hotel. On Sunday evening, February 28, 
1847, tne church was organized, Rev. Elisha 
Tucker, then pastor of the Oliver Street Church, 
being in the chair, under the name of the " Hope 
Chapel Baptist Church in the city of New York." 
Rev. David Bellamy was chosen to be the pas- 
tor. On the 22d of April, 1847, a council met 
in the First Baptist Church, on Broome Street, to 
consider the propriety of recognizing this new 
body as a regular Baptist church. On motion 
of the distinguished Dr. Cone, the body was 
recognized, and public services were held on the 
first Sunday in May, at the Coliseum, their place 
of worship. Brethren Tucker, Somers, Hodge, 
and Dickenson participated in these services. 

The first pastor, as already indicated, was Rev. 
David Bellamy. He was called on February 27, 
1847. O n tne 2 6th of October, 1849, owing to 



THIRD PASTOR OF CALVARY CHURCH. 1 55 

ill health, he resigned. The second pastor was 
Rev. John Dowling, D.D. He was called Jan- 
uary 23, 1850 ; he resigned April 13, 1852. The 
church in the meantime had built, upon the lots 
already referred to, the house of worship known 
as " Hope Chapel." The name of the church 
was changed, in 1852, to the " Broadway Baptist 
Church." 

Rev. A. D. Gillette was the third pastor in 
order. Three months and a half after Dr. Dow- 
ling's resignation, he was called. 

Although only thirty years have passed since 
that call was extended, it is suggestive of the 
changed habits of our generation to remember 
that the meeting was held on August 1st. The 
largest church in the city to-day would muster 
a very small business meeting on the first day 
of August. With the coming of the new pas- 
tor new life was given to every department of 
church activity. Soon, Hope Chapel became too 
small for the constantly increasing congregations. 
Young men gathered about the new pastor ; a 
prosperous future was assured. It became evi- 
dent that in the near future a change of location 



156 MEMORIAL. '". . ( : 

would be necessary. The up-town idea was then 
a matter of as serious discussion as it has been 
in later days. A committee was appointed to 
secure, if possible, a desirable site farther up- 
town. Some members wished to purchase lots 
on Ninth Street ; others thought it safe to go 
up as far as Sixteenth Street, although the wis- 
dom of " going so far up-town " was seriously 
questioned by very many. The discussions of 
those days provoke a smile to-day ; the discus- 
sions of recent days, as to whether it would be 
safe to go up as far as Fifty-seventh Street, will 
one day, not far hence, provoke even a broader 
smile. Dr. Gillette often spoke to the writer, of 
the anxieties of those early days, of his own 
searching for lots, of the reasons for his choice 
of those on Twenty-third Street, and of his ef- 
forts to secure them. With the aid of his 
brother-in-law, Mr. George W. A. Jenkins, and 
the co-operation of other leaders in the church, 
the lots were secured.* The number of members 



* The wisdom of Dr. Gillette's choice of this location 
is more clearly seen now than was possible at the time, 
or for several years. These same lots are worth to-day 



ENTERING HOUSE ON TWENTY-THIRD ST. I 57 

was comparatively small, their means were lim- 
ited, their burdens were heavy, and their achieve- 
ments were noble. 

In all these protracted struggles the pastor's 
patience, tact, and practical judgment were 
everywhere felt ; he suggested, guided, and in- 
spired the entire enterprise. It was a great 
event for him and the people when on the first 
Sunday in January, 1854, the congregation wor- 
shipped for the first time in the basement of their 
new house ; on the first Sunday in May of the 
same year the upper part of the house was occu- 
pied for the first time. The memories of the oc- 
casion are still precious to many of the members 
of the church. God had done great things for 
this people, and their hearts were glad ; their 
prayers were answered, their hopes realized, and 
their prospects brightened. 

Dr. Dowling's presence must have added much 
interest to the occasion. The house was the 
fruition of his desires and hopes as well as those 
of the pastor. 



nearly or quite $250,000. This seems almost incredible ; 
it illustrates the growth of our noble city. 



158 MEMORIAL. 

With the opening of the new house all the pros- 
pects of the church brightened ; new families 
soon came in ; numerical and financial, social 
and religious strength was gained, and the hopes 
of years gradually matured into substantial and 
blessed results. About this time Madison Uni- 
versity honored itself by giving the pastor of 
the Calvary Church the degree of Doctor 
of Divinity. Dr. Gillette was recognized as 
a representative man not only of the Baptist 
pulpit, but of the pulpit of the city. He sus- 
tained intimate social relations with the lead- 
ing laymen and pastors of all denominations ; 
he was also actively engaged with them in all 
forms of public and philanthropic work. He 
stood in the front rank in his own denomination ; 
his presence was heartily welcomed and his 
words gladly heard on all public occasions. He 
was always and everywhere a lover of peace and 
a lover of good men. 

As a preacher he loved the distinguishing 
doctrines of the glorious Gospel. His sermons 
abounded in striking illustrations. They were 
also marked by fervent appeals and tender ap- 



DR. GILLETTE AS PREACHER AND PASTOR. I 59 

plications. His appearance in the pulpit never 
failed to command attention. He possessed a 
remarkable facility of graceful expression. State- 
ly in figure, refined in face, and courtly in manner, 
he was a man to be observed among a thousand. 
The influence of his Huguenot ancestry could 
clearly be seen in his dignified bearing and his 
social culture. We know that religion is a per- 
sonal possession ; that no man has a right to go 
through the world on heraldic crutches ; that 
men are born into the kingdom of God not of 
blood, but of the will of God ; nevertheless, a 
noble ancestiy is a rich inheritance. Dr. Gillette 
received from both his father's and his mother's 
families the restraining and inspiring tendencies 
of a religious ancestry. This was to him a valu- 
able possession both in and out of the pulpit. 

As a pastor in the Calvary Church he was de- 
voted to his duties. His great tact and attract- 
ive social qualities made him a Welcome visitor 
in every home. He understood that the mere 
preacher can never really build up a church ; that 
the work done in the pulpit must be supplement- 
ed by the work done in the home. Perhaps 



i6o 



MEMORIAL. 



nine men fail to-day as pastors for every one 
who fails as a preacher. Our churches need 
pastors ; without them true growth is impossible ; 
without them speedy death is almost certain. 
Dr. Gillette understood this. He preached the 
Gospel from house to house. At the bedside 
of the sick and in the house of mourning he was 
gentle in manner, wise in counsel, and fervent 
in spirit. He loved, like his Master, to heighten 
the joy of the marriage feast by his presence ; 
no one was more welcome. His conversation 
abounded in pleasing reminiscences, sparkling 
anecdotes, and religious instruction. He made 
his religion welcome in the social circle : this is 
a rare gift, an enviable gift. Here many min- 
isters utterly fail ; here he was peculiarly suc- 
cessful. This was a marked element of his power. 
He carried the spirit of Christ with him always 
and everywhere. Men took knowledge of him 
that he had been with Jesus. 

He loved the young. He never grew old. 
Dr. Guthrie said, " Never call me old while my 
heart is young." Dr. Gillette's heart was always 
young. This characteristic gave him many 



DR. GILLETTE AND THE YOUNG. 



161 






friends outside of his own church and denom- 
ination. It gave him favor in the eyes of 
churches in the later years of his life. It is 
sometimes said that churches do not like old 
men as pastors ; but they liked him to the last ; 
he was always full of the enthusiasm of youth 
and hope. - The boys and girls of to-day will be 
the men and women of to-morrow. This, Dr. 
Gillette thoroughly understood. He would 
never knowingly " snub " anybody; he certainly 
would never snub a boy. Boys soon found this 
out. They flocked about him. They welcomed 
him in their homes, they joyously greeted him 
on the street; they loved to hear him when^ 
he preached, as he often did, specially to the 
young. As a consequence there was always a 
large number of young people in the church ; 
they had their prayer-meetings ; they had their 
social circles ; they had their literary entertain- 
ments. Sometimes the Doctor had to mediate 
between some of the older and less sympathetic 
brethren and these young disciples. It was 
always easy to tell which side he would take ; 
the young knew that he loved them. 

I T 



l62 MEMORIAL. 

While decided in his convictions, he was 
marked by a sweet Christian charity. Orthodox, 
as were his fathers, in Christian doctrine and 
Baptist usage, he was never objectionably dog- 
matic. He loved all denominations of Chris- 
tians : he saw the good — if there was any to be 
seen — in every system of belief. But he never 
wavered in his faith in the glorious doctrines 
of the Gospel. He was tested more than 
once by his strict loyalty to his convictions. 

Thus the years of the New York pastorate 
glided on. The pastor was beloved by all, and 
the church was accomplishing its mission in the 
•city, and sending out its influence throughout 
the country. In the meantime the clouds of 
battle were darkening our national sky. The 
whole country was deeply moved. A large 
number of young men in the Calvary Church 
heard their country's call and rushed to her de- 
fence. God had work in another field for the 
wise and patriotic pastor. He was to go into 
still darker clouds at the nation's capital. 
Washington was then the center of tremendous 
activities and seriously conflicting opinions. 



DR. GILLETTE AND THE WAR. 1 63 

Into this stormy sea, Dr. Gillette, by the provi- 
dence of God, was plunged; by his knowledge 
and sympathy he was specially fitted for these 
new duties. To the cause of the Union Dr. 
Gillette gave his wise counsels, his practical 
judgment, his outspoken patriotism, and his 
earnest prayers. December 22, 1863, he resign- 
ed his pastorate of nearly twelve years in the 
Calvary Church, New York. But to this hour 
his work is appreciated heartily, his influence 
felt constantly, and his memory cherished ten- 
derly. 

This sketch of his pastorate of the Calvary 
Church would be incomplete without a brief 
allusion to his subsequent connection with the 
church. Rev. R. J. W. Buckland, D.D., was his 
immediate successor. In May, 1870, the present 
pastor entered upon his duties. The church, in 
its history of 36 years, has thus had five pastors 
— Bellamy, Dowling, Gillette, Buckland, and the 
present pastor. Four of these — Dr. Gillette 
being the last of the four — have finished their 
earthly course. It was always his desire that he 
might die in the membership of the church he 



164 MEMORIAL. 

so loved. On his return from England in the 
fall of 1870, he, and his beloved wife, resumed 
their connection with the church. Upon going 
to Sing Sing their membership was transferred 
to the church in that town ; but on their return 
to the city, their letters were brought again to 
the dear old home. Never will the writer for- 
get the long and sunny visit had with the Doc- 
tor at that time. He spoke of his love for the 
old church ; of his desire that he might have a 
home there until he went to his home above ; of 
his wish that when that time came he might be 
buried from the spot he loved so well. He 
spoke also of the early days of his Christian life, 
of his joy in the work of the Gospel, of his love 
for his precious Saviour and the blessedness of 
His service. It was an occasion never to be for- 
gotten. The Doctor was permitted last May to 
gratify a long-cherished wish — he was present 
at the laying of the corner-stone of the new 
Calvary Church on 57th Street. The kind allu- 
sions made to him by Drs. Hall, Taylor, Broad- 
us, and the pastor, he was able to hear without 
giving way to undue emotion. 



DYING A MEMBER OF CALVARY CHURCH. 1 65 



Of the writer's personal relations to him dur- 
ing the past twelve years he can hardly trust 
himself to speak. A former pastor is not always 
the best friend to a pastor of a church. Dr. 
Gillette was one of my best friends. To young 
ministers generally he was a friend. There is no 
jealousy so sad as that which some men who 
are growing old show toward the younger breth- 
ren who are coming on the stage of action. 
This feeling has embittered the lives of other- 
wise noble men ; it has been often " the last in- 
firmity of noble minds." Dr. Gillette was too 
large-hearted to cherish this miserable feeling. 
For twelve years my relations with him have 
been most intimate. I have stood with him be- 
side his own sick and dying children and grand- 
children ; together we have stood by the dying 
and the dead in other families ; together we 
have conducted funeral and marriage services, 
and labored in many other ways. He was 
always and everywhere the true friend, the gen- 
uine brother, and the perfect Christian gentle- 
man. For him this writer will always cherish 
an unwavering affection. 



i66 



MEMORIAL. 



His wish was carried out ; from the old 
church he was borne to his grave. 'In Calvary 
Church his memory will be precious ever. 

His life in every circle in which he moved was 
a constant benediction, a model to the younger 
men in the ministry, and a testimony to the 
grace of God. 



XL 

"FLOWERS FOR HIS COFFIN." 

Dr. W. C. Wilkinson, who wields the pen 
of a profound thinker as well as of a cultured 
writer, shortly after hearing of Dr. Gillette's 
death, asked from the editor of the Standard, 
at Chicago, 111., the privilege of " laying a flower 
on the coffin " of a brother beloved, who had 
been " a friend in need." He filled two columns 
with a graphic and charming picture of Dr. 
Gillette's interposition to rescue him from hu- 
miliation and " durance vile " on board of a 
German steamer, among whose passengers they 
met as comparative strangers. The well-known 
pastor of Calvary Church, New York, was a 
favored guest in the cabin. The young Con- 
necticut preacher was a stranger, who came on 

board to find all the rooms taken, and himself 

(167) 



1 68 MEMORIAL. 

treated as " second-class " by the stupid steward, 
though he had paid as " first-class." His first 
night had been passed amid the horrors of Ger- 
man tobacco-smoke, and his morning claim of a 
seat at table in the cabin had been rudely re- 
pulsed by the aforesaid steward ; who, before all 
the company, in excited tones, had exclaimed 
in English, bad in a double sense : " You second 
class ! go second class." Dr. Gillette " came, 
saw, and conquered," as in many a like victory 
of a true man. A word with the Captain, and 
young Wilkinson was at Dr. Gillette's side, the 
favored of all eyes. Recalling his idea of a 
"flower on his coffin," with which he had begun 
his narrative, Dr. Wilkinson closes thus : " We 
were fellow-men, fellow-passengers, fellow-Chris- 
tians — that was all. It was a consummate 
flower of courtesy and good - will." Other 
" flowers " than this were brought for Dr. Gil- 
lette's coffin ; because there, were flowers to 
bring. 

Many a private letter and press notice dropped 
buds and blossoms of truth on the fruitful heap 
of common biographical memories. Of his min- 



FLOWERS FROM PENN. AND VIRGINIA. 1 69 

isterial life in Philadelphia, Rev. T. S. Malcom, 
who had witnessed it all, said to the public, 
who echoed the truth : " Few ministers in Phil- 
adelphia have ever been more useful or more 
greatly beloved. Gifted in the pulpit, and es- 
teemed in social circles, he accomplished great 
good ; and his name will be held in the high- 
est regard." Of his New York life and min- 
istry, among other extended notices, one of the 
secular papers, after speaking of his children, 
gone and left, says of him : " Dr. Gillette was 
an extremely popular man, wherever known, 
owing to his kindliness of manner, tact in the 
sick-room, and genial and cordial ways. He 
was a deep thinker and an able preacher, and 
his large heart and Christian spirit made him a 
great favorite with his professional brethren, as 
well as with the people over whom he had 
charge." 

As to his Washington pastorate, Dr. Dickin- 
son, editor of the Religious Herald, says : " For 
several years he was pastor of the First Baptist 
Church in Washington City, and a member of 
the Potomac Association. This brought him in 



170 MEMORIAL. 

contact with some of our Virginia people soon 
after the close of the war ; and, while fraternal 
intercourse between the sections had not been 
fully restored, he was most tenderly cherished 
by the Potomac brethren. We have delightful 
recollections of a night spent with him at War- 
renton, Va., in 1867. He was then quite old; 
but there was a boyish brightness about him 
that was very captivating. There was a sunny 
and joyous smile on his face, that seemed to 
make the whole world look brighter. He was 
the picture of Christian contentment. He had 
a large acquaintance with men, and loved to 
talk of the preachers ; and it was only of the 
good in them he ever spoke. We could see no 
trace of ambition or jealousy in him. He was 
calm, genial, and happy, and imparted his spirit 
to all who touched him." 

A bouquet, fresh and fragrant, comes late, but 
grateful, from the church of Sing Sing, of which 
he was pastor from November i, 1864, to De- 
cember 1, 1868. In a minute put upon their 
church record September 20, 1882, they say: 
" He was called at a time when the church es- 



FLOWERS FROM NEW YORK STATE. 



171 



pecially needed a wise, prudent, and judicious 
ministry. This was eminently secured in Dr. 
Gillette. As a pastor he was kind and attentive, 
a lover and promoter of peace. Asa preacher 
he was earnest, graceful, and impressive. His 
large social nature and warmth of heart were 
calculated to win esteem and affection. Old 
and young delighted in his friendship. With 
positive and denominational opinions he pos- 
sessed the largest catholicity of spirit, and main- 
tained the happiest relations with his brethren 
in the ministry. During his pastorate here he 
baptized sixty-four persons, and set before them 
the example of a cultured Christian life." 

In the church of his last pastorate, Rev. Mr. 
Scott says : " He was an interesting speaker on 
occasions where many fail ; where readiness and 
brevity, mingled sense and humor, are requisite 
to success." Mrs. Wright, at whose residence 
he made his home during most of his pastorate, 
writes : " The last Sabbath morning he was with 
us his subject was ' The Rest that remainetli for 
the people of God.' The crowning and most 
beautiful act of his life was his becoming the 



172 



MEMORIAL. 



pastor of one of the least of the small churches. 
It was like Christ, when, in one of His last acts, 
He selected from among the crowds pressing 
around Him a little child, and placed it among 
His disciples, so that it could not but be 
noticed." 

Different societies passed memorial resolu- 
tions, among which two noticed in his memoir 
are here cited. The American and Foreign 
Bible Society state that " from its organization 
he was an active member, serving it as Corre- 
sponding Secretary with great dignity and use- 
fulness at a trying period of its history, and 
being at the time of his demise one of the Vice- 
Presidents." The Thirtieth Annual Report of 
the Y. M. C. Association of the City of New 
York, just issued for 1883, after giving a para- 
graph to the facts cited in his memoir, thus 
closes its record : " Until the day of his death 
he was a wise and hearty friend, always ready 
to do everything in his power to encourage our 
work. He never regretted the course he took 
in the day of its trial, and was" spared to see the 
Association enter upon a career of usefulness 



THE COMPILER S REVIEW. 



173 



and prosperity, for which he often heartily 
thanked God." 

These few flowers, culled from clusters, are 
of the kind called " everlasting "; fadeless as 
memorials, and eloquent as monitors. 



THE COMPILER'S REVIEW. 

The expected promise of the foregoing Me- 
moirs of Dr. A. D. Gillette is fully realized in 
the now accomplished result. The four memo- 
rial tablets, furnished by special friends, have 
been set into a monumental tribute, conceived 
by a mind and heart not unduly appreciative, 
and shaped by a hand well skilled for its work. 

The flowers, that in the gush of fresh affection 
were made to strew the coffin of the tenant just 
laid there, soon faded ; the myrtle that carpets 
the grave, and the yearly wild -flowers that 
kiss the stone raised over it will also perish 
with the material monument ; but the shaft 
here reared will be cherished in dearest affec- 
tion by descendants of many generations, for 



174 MEMORIAL. 

the heritage of a good name comes ever from a 
"good man." 

Perhaps, too, hearts made kindred by Divine 
birth, in that family that knows no limit of num- 
ber or of time, may here be made better in this 
age when the Gospel ministry is by youth of 
secular aspirings too much shunned. Some one, 
as he reads, may be led to believe the inspired 
words of one among the wisest and richest 
monarchs of earth : " He that winneth souls is 
wise"; and perhaps the mantle of the rapt 
Elijah may fall, and his spirit rest on more than 
one who shall perpetuate his life of devotion 
and usefulness. 



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